THB 



PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 



MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



THE 



PIOIfEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 



MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



BY 



WILLIAM HENRY MILBURN, 

AUTHOR OF " THE RIFLE, AXB AND SADDLE-BAGS," AND " TEN TEARS OF PREACHER LIFE." 



<.... 



NEW YORK: 
DERBY & JACKSON. 

1860. 



Ektkred according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

WILLIAM HENRY MILBURN, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 

District of New York. 



W. H. T1N8ON. Stereotyper. |p- *^ ^ I Geo. Rusbkli. & Co., Printeri. 

MWV- 



i4 7^ 



3 L 



THIS BOOK 

18 DEDICATED TO 

FLETCHER H^RFER, ESQ., 

WHO HAS BEEN 

A TRUE FRIEND TO ME AND MINE 
FOR MANT TEARS. 



PREFACE. 



It is now nearly two and twenty years since my 
father pitched his tent in Prairie-land. I was then 
a lad. The broad savannas, clad with flowers; 
the emerald groves, that seemed like islands of the 
deep ; the Father of Waters ; the Mother of Floods; 
the Beautiful River; the fierce, ostrich-like Piasau, 
whose outline on the bluffs of the Mississippi above 
Alton commemorates the Indian's dread of the terri- 
ble being : these soon took a strong hold of my 
imagination. From that day to this, the West has 
been to me a land half of dream and half of 
reality. To read and hear everything connected 
with its history became a passion. 

I have sought in this book to set in order the 
results of this reading and hearing. It would be 
almost impossible for me to say what parts came to 
me from tradition and what from the written page. 



Vlll PREFACE. 



Only I must be allowed to mention two books 
which have been particularly serviceable. The one 
is the work of my friend, Francis G. Parkman, Esq., 
the " History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," one of 
the most picturesque and vivid books of history 
that has ever fallen in my way ; the second is the 
work of another of my friends, Albert J. Pickett, 
Esq., the " History of Alabama," naive as it is 
entertaining. 

I have sought to follow the pilgrimage of the 
plumed cavaliers of De Soto in their quest of the 
Great River, and the gold which they fondly hoped 
was to be found upon its banks; I have floated 
with Marquette in his bark canoe as he went upon 
his gentle embassy to the Indians; I have wan- 
dered with La Salle as he vainly strove to found 
a French Empire in the West, and mourned by the 
Texan grave of one of the most unfortunate but 
heroic of men; I have sat down with the kindly 
French in their Paradise of Kaskaskia, and enjoyed 
the spell of their idyllic life ; I have trudged with our 
own pioneers, as with stout hearts they crossed the 
Cumberland Gap and entered the Dark and Bloody 
Ground; I have stood with them at their guns 
in their blockhouses, have slept on their raw-hide 



PKEFACE. IX 

beds, and shared their jerked meat and " dodger ;" 
and I have sought to appreciate the development of 
Saxon sense under the tuition of the wilderness, 
and to trace the schooling of the mind under the 
auspices of social life, in application to the needs 
of self-govemment. I have travelled the circuit 
with the first preachers, sat in the congregation 
as they expounded the doctrines of eternal life, and 
welcomed them for their works' sake ; and last, I 
have summed up in a few words what has been 
done, since the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803, in 
the way of exploration and development, on the 
other side of the Great River. 

To me it has been a pleasant labor ; I hope that 
the reading will be as pleasant. 

Brooklyn, February, i860. 



1* 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

De Soto, 13 

LECTURE n. 
Marquette and La Salle, . . . . , , 67 

LECTURE IIL 
The French in Illinois, 127 

LECTURE IV. 
The Red Men and the War of Pontiac, . . .163 

LECTURE V. 

The Cabin Homes of the Wilderness, at the beginning 

of the Revolution, 203 



301 CONTENTS. 

LECTURE VI. 

PAGE 

The Cabin Homes of the Wilderness during the Ame- 
rican Revolution, . . . . . .251 

LECTURE Vn. 

Sketches of Character and Adventure in the West, to 

the Failure of Burr's Expedition, 1 806, . . 303 

LECTURE Vm. 

Manna in the Wilderness ; or, the old Preachers and 

their Preaching, ...... 345 

LECTURE IX. 

Western Mind ; its Manifestations, Eloquence and Humor, 3 89 

LECTURE X. 
The Great Valley ; its Past, its Present, and its Future, 429 



Lecture I. 
DE SOTO 



DE SOTO. 

The contrast is most striking between the Span- 
iard of to-daj, and the Spaniard of three hundred 
years ago. ItTow, he is indolent, often apathetic, 
grave, reserved, and whatever his inward capacity 
of passion or of exertion, an inefficient and idle man. 
But in those old days, the Spanish race was filled 
and inspired with a wild and tireless fourfold energy 
of avarice, religion, ambition and adventure, which 
swept them round and round the world in a long 
resistless bloody storm of conquest, conversion and 
slaughter, gained them their vast colonial realms and 
wealth, and brought to pass a panorama of achieve- 
ments, miseries, cruelties and crimes whose very 
representations, in the antique wood-cuts of De Bry, 
are horrible to look upon. Governor Galvano 
quaintly says, speaking of the craze which fell upon 
Spain in consequence of the early American dis- 
coveries, that they " were ready to leap into the sea 
to swim, if it had been possible, into those new-found 
parts." 

There is no stronger or stranger exemplification of 
tlie steady obstinacy with which this insane chase 

15 



16 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

after riches and glory was pursued than the long 
chapter of disastrous Spanish inroads upon the terri- 
tory of the southern half of the United States, then 
called Florida, which took place between 1512 and 
the foundation of St. Augustine in 1565. 

The earliest European name associated with the 
southern coast of tlie United States is that of Juan 
Ponce de Leon, a brave old warrior, whose early 
manhood had been passed in hunting the Moors 
from Granada and in acquiring that inflexibility of 
purpose and hardiness of character, which enabled 
him to play his distinguished part as a conqueror in 
the New World. Sailing with Columbus on his 
second voyage, spending most of his remaining life in 
the West Indies, subjugating Porto Hico, where he 
ruled with an iron sway as governor, superseded in 
his command, thirsting ever for gold and glory, and 
yearning for a renewed life in which to enjoy the 
fruits of his valor, he turned his prow to the north- 
ward, in search of the land wliere the crystal waters 
of the fountain of youth washed those yellow sands 
of price, the discovery and possession of which would 
give the happy voyager the realization of the twin 
dream of Alchemy — gold and immortality. Fables 
were the faith of the time. Why not ? Could cre- 
dulity cherish a wilder phantasy than the Genoese 
mariner's ? Yet this had been fulfilled. Might not 
De Leon's, too ? So the stout old cavalier took his 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 17 

way to tlie north. Aged Indians had told him that 
in that direction lay the objects of his search. His 
many fights had left him full of wounds and scars ; 
age was bending his manly form, weakness was 
creeping on apace. 'No matter, for the Fountain 
shall give him immortal youth, and with it, health 
and beauty. 

Land was made Palm Sunday — Pascua Florida — 
1512, near St. Augustine. Beautiful enough for the 
shore of the Immortals was this which now rose 
before his eyes, covered with rich greensward, dap- 
pled with flowers of unnumbered dyes, over- 
shadowed by giant trees clad with summer leaves, 
glorious with a rainbow garniture of tropic blossoms, 
over which hung long pendulous veils as if of silver 
tissue — spectral veils like Mokanna's, hiding the 
hideous face of the swamp miasma — veils which a 
sad experience has taught men now to call the " Cur- 
tains of Death." Softly came the land breeze 
freighted with the breath of flowers, upon that tri- 
umphal Sabbath morning, and it came — so thought 
the Spaniard — straight from that fabled spring, and 
with the fever of excitement in his veins, and the 
throb of rapture at his heart, " Florida," he cried, " is 
it not the land of flowers !" In honor of the festival, 
and in honor of the blossom-clad coast, he named a 
name which it bears to this day. 

But alas for the hopes of Ponce de Leon ! It was 



18 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

no morning land of immortality to him, save as tlie 
name he bestowed preserves for ns and after-times 
the dim shadow of his antique renown. Upon his 
second voyage, a poisonous arrow from an Indian's 
bow brought him his message of doom. Hastening 
to Cuba, he breathed his last, leaving his Flower- 
land a fatal legacy to Spain for many a sad year to 
come. 

In those old days of Spanish rule, there was but 
one step from the Quixotic to the Satanic, and that 
step w^as taken by Yasquez De Ayllon, the next 
adventurer whose keels furrowed the waves of our 
coast. This monster came for slaves to work the 
mines of the West Indies, where the atrocities of the 
Spaniards had in less than thirty years well-nigh 
exterminated a numerous and happy people. 

Eeaching the coast of South Carolina, De Ayllon 
entered a river, called, in honor of the captain who 
discovered it, the Jordan ; known to us by its Indian 
name, the Cumbahee. Landing on a pleasant shore, 
which the natives called Chicora — Mocking-bird — 
they were hospitably welcomed and entertained. 
But the Christian white man's return for the red 
heathen's courtesy was betrayal, outrage, and death. 
Having laid in his supplies, De Ayllon invited the 
Indians aboard his vessels; an invitation gladly 
accepted by the unsuspecting red men. While 
crowds of them were below, the hatches were closed, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 19 

all sail made, and away oyer the blue waters sped 
the winged monsters with their prey. But did not 
that wild, despairing cry from ship and shore, of 
husbands and wives, parents and children, thus ruth- 
lessly torn from each other, reach the ear of God ? 
He heard and he avenged. One of the ships foun- 
dered, and all on board perished. The remaining 
Indians refused food, and thus died. The aborigines 
of this country could not be reduced to slavery. 

Again De Ay lion came with three vessels and many 
men to conquer Chicora. The natives masked their 
purpose of revenge, received him kindly, lulled his 
suspicions into fatal security, and he dreamed the 
goodly land already his own. They made a great 
feast for their guests some leagues in the interior. 
Two hundred of De Ayllon's men attended — ^he with 
a small party remaining to guard the ships. Three 
days the banquet lasted. The third night the 
Indians arose and smote their treacherous invaders 
and slew them, so that not one of the two hundred 
was left to tell the terrible tale to his companions on 
the beach. But the Indians themselves bore the 
tidings, for they fell upon the guard, killed some, 
and wounded others, so that but a handful reached 
their ships and bore away for St. Domingo. De Ayl- 
lon himself seems to have died, either of his wounds, 
or shame, or both, at the port in Chicora. 

A few years later Pamphilo de Narvaez, in com 



20 PIONEEES, PKEACHEftS AND PEOPLE 

mand of a splendid armament, undertook the subjuga- 
tion of Florida. At an earlier date he had been sent 
by the governor of Cuba to arrest the victorious 
progress of Hernan Cortez in Mexico. Losing an eje, 
and failing in the attempt, he was conducted to the 
presence of Cortez, whom he complimented by 
informing that he must be a remarkable man, as he 
had succeeded in vanquishing him. '' That," replied 
the redoubtable conqueror of the Montezumas, " is 
the least thing I have done in Mexico." 

Landing at Tampa Bay, 12th April, 1528, witli 
four hundred men and forty-five horses, Narvaez 
immediately dispatched his vessels to Cuba for fresh 
supplies, paying no regard to the prudent entreaties 
of the treasurer of the expedition, Alvar E'ufiez. 
They soon roused the relentless hostility of the valiant 
Seminoles by their gi-atuitous barbarities, and e^'ery 
rood of their toilsome march, through tangled forests 
and endless quagmii-es, was rendered doubly difficult 
by ambuscades and attacks. Inspirited, however, by 
the stories of some captives, acting as guides, to the 
efi'ect that in Appalache they would find a fertile 
province, abounding with gold, the object of their 
eager quest, they urged their way onward. On 
reaching the land of promise, ISTarvaez, who had pic- 
tured to himself another Mexico, was bitterly unde- 
ceived, finding only a rude village of two hundred 
and fifty cabins. Tliey took possession unopposed, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 21 

for tlie inhabitants had fled to the woods. Twenty- 
five days were passed here ; but the army, now more 
clamorous for bread than for gold, learning that the 
sea lay nine days' march to the southward, bent its 
weary steps toward the village of Ante, where, it 
was said, were plenty of provisions and a harmless 
people. Their path, however, was beset by yet 
greater natural obstacles, and by the implacable fury 
of the savages. At length reaching Ante, not far 
from the present St. Marks, they found the village 
burned by the retreating inhabitants, but esteemed 
the discovery of a plentiful supply of maize, ample 
compensation. 

What was to be done ? Their hopes of conquest 
and treasure were gone ; to remain in the land was 
impossible ; to traverse the shore in search of their 
ships might be fruitless, and would needlessly expose 
them to the sleepless ferocity of the Indians. Many 
of their horses were slain ; so were not a few of their 
bravest companions. 

A day's march brought them to the banks of the 
river, which widened into a bay. Here they resolved 
to build them such boats as they might, and in them 
seek their ships or attempt a return to Cuba. Right 
vigorously did they ply their work ; and at length Rye 
frail barks were launched, in each of which on the 
20th of September, 1528, were crowded from forty to 
fifty miserable souls : crowded so that the gunwales 



22 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

were almost even witli the water. Thus along that 
tropic shore did they hope to coast in the season of 
storms. J^arvaez, remaining one day in one of his 
boats with a sailor and a sick page as a guard, while 
his crew went ashore to pillage for food, was driven 
out to sea by a tempest and never heard of more. 
The only survivors of this ill-starred expedition were 
Alvar !Nunez and four companions, who, after 
incredible wanderings along the northern shore of the 
Gulf of Mexico, westward through Texas to the 
Eocky Mountains, and thence to Mexico, exposed to 
every species of hardship and peril — after passing 
from tribe to tribe of Indians, sometimes starved as 
slaves, sometimes, we may believe, worshipped as 
demi-gods, in 1537 — nearly ten years from the time 
of their sailing, finally reached Spain. 

Such experiences and failures might have caused 
reflection. The adventurous Spaniards even might 
have questioned themselves what would be the pro- 
bable best result even of success. Old Governor 
Galvano, in his history of the discoveries of the world, 
says, with rare good sense for that day, " I cannot 
tell how it commeth to passe, except it be by the iust 
judgement of God, that of so much gold and precious 
stones as haue been gotten in the Antiles by so manny 
Spaniards, little or none remaineth, but the most part 
IS spent and consumed, and no good thing done." It 
seems as if these chivalrous aspirants for wealth and 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 23 

glory must have observed the same. And if not, still 
the sad fate of the pioneers in Florida, one would think, 
were enough to dishearten and deter any who might 
thereafter dream of its exploration and conquest. 
Not so. 

A little before this time, in 1537, there had 
appeared at the court of Charles Y. a renowned cap- 
tain, adorned with laurels from the conquest of Peru, 
and enriched by 180,000 golden crowns, his share of 
the plundered treasure of Atahualpa. A gentleman 
by four descents, and therefore entitled to member- 
ship of the noble order of Santiago, he had neverthe- 
less commenced life as a private soldier of fortune ; 
his sword and target his only possessions. And thus 
far fortune and deeds 'of prowess had won him great 
success. His lance was said to have been equal to 
any ten in the army of Pizarro. In the saddle his 
match was not to be found. Prudent in counsel as 
he was brave in the field, he was no less knightly 
in denouncing what he esteemed the wrong — boldly 
withstanding his commander to the face, and charging 
home upon him the wickedness as well as bad policy 
of the Inca's murder. 

He was proud, determined and reserved ; as the 
Portuguese narrator describes him, "a sterne man 
and of few words ; though he was glad to sift and 
know the opinion of all men, yet after hee had 
delivered his owne hee would not be contraried." A 



24 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

recently publislied fac-simile of his signature, a large 
and strong autograph, as by a powerful hand more 
used to wield sword and spear than the pen of the 
writer, corresponds well with his stately and haughty 
character. Although not naturally liberal, he was 
profuse and magnificent in his expenditure in this 
his first appearance at court, and was attended by a 
troop of gallant knights wdio had fought under him 
in Peru, and had brought back each a fortune from 
the treasure of the Incas. Luis de Moscoso de 
Alvarado, John Danusco, and a long list of others, 
with names equally claiming attention, did their 
histories come within our design, spent their 
wealth, acquired in soldierly wise, upon soldier's 
luxuries, mettled barbs and splendid armor ; but 
Hernando de Soto surpassed in magnificence all the 
courtiers of the Emperor. Only five and thirt}^ years 
of age, tall, handsome, commanding in presence and 
action, was it marvellous that Donna Isabella de 
Bobadilla, though the daughter of the very earl 
under whose banner he had first enlisted in the 
ranks, one of the fairest ladies of Spain, of one of the 
proudest and most powerful families, should yield 
her heart to the irresistible soldier ? So fortune and 
his merit won him his best — alas, that it was also his 
latest boon ! — a loving, prudent and faithful wife. 

And now could he not rest in that pleasant palace 
at Seville, and buy him cornfields and vineyards and 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 



25 



olive plantations, and become a great lord? With 
houses and lands and servants, friends and honor, 
great connections and a good and noble wife, had he 
not wherewith to be content ? But when did the lust 
of fame or power or gold ever allow a man to be 
content ? Here they united their spells, and De Soto 
must find new worlds to conquer. Find them he did 
— but finding and conquering are two things. So he 
sought for and obtained the magnificent appointment 
of captain-general for life of Cuba, Adelantado (civil 
and military governor) of Florida ; and a marquisate 
of thirty leagues by fifteen, in any part of the to-be- 
conquered country. He is to imdertake the conquest 
at his own expense, and to pay to the crown one fifth 
of the treasure found. 

And now comes the wonderful story of Alvar 
IsTunez Cabeca de Yaca, like an additional demoniac 
spell, to tempt this goodly knight. To be sure, the 
treasurer of IS'arvaez brought home no treasure ; but 
he threw out dark hints of the great wealth of the 
land he had explored, and had indeed intended to 
apply for the very adelantadoship which De Soto 
had obtained. In default of this, he asked and 
received the government of La Plata. 

The imagination of De Soto, and of Spain, took 
new fire. 

The triumphs and trophies of Cortez and Pizarro 
ehall be as nothing to his ; for what are Mexico and 



26 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

Peru to Florida! Poor Ponce de Leon ! thy fatal 
legacy liatli fallen to another heir ! 

Florida at that day embraced all the country lying 
north of Mexico, extending upon its eastern coast 
from Key West to the banks of Newfoundland ; so 
that it embraced what we know as the United States 
of America. E'eed we be sad that it was a woeful 
heritage to the sons of Spain ? This land was held 
in reserve for the scions of a nobler stock than 
Charles Y. g0YerR.ed, and for a sublimer civilization 
than Castile and Arragon were able to bestow upon 
the world. 

In fourteen months the armament is ready to 
weigh anchor. Nine hundred and fifty men, the 
best blood and chivalry of Spain, gay young knights 
thirsting for distinction and wealth, well tried war- 
riors from the fields of Africa and Peru, stout men at 
arms, halberdiers, cross-bow men and arquebusiers 
— more have come than the general can take. Men 
have sold their patrimonial acres to furnish them- 
selves for the campaign. Shall not every such 
receive a hundred fold? One disposed of 60,000 
reals "^ of rent ; one of a town of vassals ; Baltasar de 
Gallegos, of " houses, and vineyards, and rent corne, 
and ninetie rankes of Olive trees in the Xarafe of 
Siuil.-' The usual difficulty in fitting out an expedi- 

* Real, the Spanish silver coin, worth an eighth of a dollar. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 27 

tion to well-known and rich countries was to find 
men. De Soto, bound to an unknown wilderness, 
was unable to find vessels for the multitude of volun- 
teers, and many of those who had sold their estates 
for the sake of joining him, unable to find room on 
board the fleet, w^ere forced to stay behind. 

Amid the braying of trumpets and the roar of 
artillery, the vivas of the beholders and the shouts of 
the campaigners, the fleet of ten sail left the port of 
San Lucar de Barrameda, April 6th, 1538. They 
reached Cuba about the last of May, and here De 
Soto spent a year in organizing the government, 
and making preparations for his enterprise. 

Cuba was noted for its noble breed of horses, 
wherewith our gay cavaliers supplied themselves 
amply ; and by way of putting themselves in trim for 
the work before them, spent much time in tourna- 
ments and bull-fights. The inhabitants of the island, 
well-nigh crazed by excitement and the brave show, 
flocked in throngs to the standard of De Soto. At 
their head was Don Yasco Porcallo de Figueroa, a 
doughty old warrior wdio had seen much severe ser- 
vice in many parts of the world, and had now settled 
down as a wealthy proprietor in the Queen of the 
Antilles. As the horse smelleth the battle from afar, 
so did this veteran. To show him due honor, the 
Adelantado appointed him his lieutenant general. 

The Portuguese narrator states that Don Yasco's 



23 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

object was not glory, but Indians; whom he desired 
to obtain in order to supply the places of those 
whom toil and cruelty had slain in his mines and 
upon his estates in Cuba. This purpose seems, 
at least, consonant with the character of a Spanish 
Cuban proprietor; and that his treatment of his 
slaves was such as to require reinforcements to their 
numbers, may appear from a quaint old story of his 
steward. This steward, it seems, discovered that 
certain of the Indian slaves, as was the sad custom of 
their race, had agreed to meet at an appointed place 
and kill themselves, to escape from their tormenting 
taskmasters. So he repaired with a cudgel to the 
rendezvous, and when the miserable heathen had 
assembled, suddenly stepped among them and told 
them that they could neither plan nor do anything 
which he did not know before ; and that he had now 
come to kill himself with them, in order that, in the 
next world, he might treat them worse than in this. 
The poor wretches believed him, and returned quietly 
to their labor. 

All things were at last settled, and leaving his 
noble wife Donna Isabel to govern the island, De 
Soto sailed from Havana, with mirthful pomp. May 
18th, 1539. Already Juan de Anasco had made two 
cruises, to discover an harbor in which to land. A 
point was selected, and thither the fleet sailed. It 
consisted of eight large vessels, a caravel, and two 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 29 

brigantines, and contained a thousand men, besides 
the sailors. Whitsunday, May 25th, they made a 
convenient bay on the western or Gulf coast of 
Florida, which, in honor of the day, was named 
Espiritu Santo : it is now called Tampa Bay. ]N'o 
sooner had they neared the shore than bale-fires 
were seen blazing, far as the eye could reach : vast 
columns of black smoke ascending, in token that the 
Indians were preparing to receive them. Eight days 
were taken to sound the bay, and then the debarka- 
tion commenced. A slight sku-mish, in which the 
natives were soon dispersed, was all that occurred to 
impede them. 

A march of two leagues brought them to the 
deserted village of a chief named Hirrihigua, where, 
on the capture of some of the natives, De Soto was 
made acquainted with the horrible atrocities prac- 
tised by his predecessor, K'arvaez. That worthy hav- 
ing entered into solemn covenant with the cacique, 
suddenly became enraged, at what no one could tell, 
ordered the dogs to be let loose on the mother of 
Hirrihigua, who was soon torn to pieces, and then 
commanded the nose of the chief to be cut off. This 
brutality had implanted in the breast of the Semi- 
nole an undying hatred toward the Spaniard. To 
all of De Soto's overtures he returned at first disdain 
and then evasion. At this village, the stores for the 
campaign were landed, and at the gathering of the 



30 PIOXEEES, 

forces a strange medley did the muster show. A 
thousand knights and soldiers, twelve priests, eight 
other ecclesiastics, and four monks ; workers in wood 
and iron, miners and assajers ; then three hundred 
and fifty thorough-bred horses, three hundred hpgs 
to stock the country, and packs of bloodhounds to 
hunt the natives. There were matchlocks and cross- 
bows, pikes, lances, and swords ; one piece of ord- 
nance ; manacles and iron collars for their prisoners ; 
and a store of baubles, as presents for those whom 
they might wish to proj)itiate. Wine, bread, and 
flour for the mass, were there ; and, lastly, cards for 
gambling — which, by the way, was carried to excess, 
men often losing the last article they possessed. 
Stately knights, clad cap-d-jyie in burnished armor, 
bestrode their prancing steeds, while all the com- 
monalty were well protected with breast-plates, 
bucklers, and helmets. There had been no stint of 
money to supply all that experience could suggest or 
that taste could hint as necessaries or luxuries in the 
enterprise of conquest and colonization. 

Rumors having reached the camp that a Spaniard 
was living in a neighboring village, Baltazar Gal- 
legos, a dauntless officer, was dispatched at the head 
of sixty horsemen to secure him for an interpreter 
and guide. As Baltazar and his troopers were 
rapidly pushing on, they espied a company of In- 
dians on the verge of a plain. The Spaniards, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 31 

anxious for a brush with the natives, manoeuvred to 
attack them ; but all save two fled to the forest. 
One of these two w^as wounded ; the other, at whom 
Alvaro Nieto, one of the boldest troopers, was spur- 
ring, danced from side to side, seeking to parry 
Nieto's thrust with his bow, shouting the while, 
" Seville, Seville !" hearing which, the trooper cried, 
" Is your name Juan Ortiz ?" " Yes," was the 
reply. Eeining up his horse, Alvaro caught the 
other by the arm, raised him to the croup of his 
saddle, and hurried in triumph to Baltazar. 

Tlie story of Ortiz deserves a brief recital. Born 
at Seville, " of worshipful parentage," he had joined 
the expedition of E'arvaez, had returned to Cuba 
with his vessels^, and had accompanied the expedition 
which, ten years before, had put in at the bay of 
Espiritu Santo, in search of his commander. It was 
not long after the departure of that barbarian, and 
while Hirrihigua was in the agony of his recent 
wrongs, that, as the expedition was coasting along 
the shore, a few Indians appeared, pointing to a let- 
ter in a cleft reed, evidently left by N^arvaez. The 
Spanirads invited them to bring it aboard. This 
they refused ; but four of them, entering a canoe, 
came off as hostages for any of the crew who might 
go to fetch it. Four of the whites accordingly landed, 
and were instantly set upon by a crowd of savages 
who had been concealed in the thicket. The four 



82 PIONEEES, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

hostages sprang into the sea, and swam ashore. The 
crew, anticipating the fate of their companions, and 
fearing the like for themselves, made sail w^ith all 
speed. The captives were conveyed to the village, 
and condemned to be shot, one at a time. Tlu'ce 
were thus dealt with, and the fourth, Juan Ortiz, was 
being led forth, when the wife and daughters of the 
cacique, touched witli compassion at sight of his 
youth and comeliness, interceded with Hirrihigua, 
and gained a respite. His life was still a wretched 
one, softened only by the watchful kindness of the 
women, who once even rescued him after he had 
been half burnt alive by order of his implacable 
captor. At length, through their aid, he succeeded 
in escaping to the village of Mocoso, a neighboring 
chief, who treated him as if he had been a brother, 
and protected him from all danger. Here he had 
remained ever since, and was now residing ; nearly 
naked, browned, painted, with a headdress of fea- 
thers, so that one might not know him from a savage, 
on an embassy from Mocoso to the camp of De Soto. 
Great was the joy of the camj^ at the recovery of 
Ortiz. The Adelantado received him as a son, gave 
him all tliat heart could wish, and thenceforth he 
became the interpreter of the expedition. 

Meanwhile, Lieuten ant-General Don Yasco Por- 
callo, whom we picked up in Cuba, testy and withal 
vain-glorious, yet longing to distinguish himself, en- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 33 

treats to be sent in pursuit of Hirriliigua, that lie 
may ferret him out of his swampy fastness, and 
bring him, friend or prisoner, to camp. Despite 
monitions, he sets off, dashes forward, and is only 
arrested by a quagmire, where himself and horse are 
in imminent jeopardy of being smothered. Con- 
quered by the mire, he returns crestfallen to head- 
quarters, venting curses upon the country, natives 
and expedition. " May the devil fly away with the 
country where they have such names!" quoth he. 
" Let those fight in this accursed place for fame and 
wealth who will. As for me, I have enough of both 
to last me. So I will back to Cuba, and let the hot 
bloods see it out." Thus does Don Yasco Porcallo 
de Figueroa disappear from this story ; for, at his 
request, De Soto sent him home. " The prudent 
man foreseeth the danger, and hideth himself." 

A strong garrison was left to protect the stores, 
and the march commenced toward the northeast. 
As they left the coast, the country improved, and 
their way lay by pleasant cornfields, over grassy 
plains, and through forests where the eye detected 
many a tree familiar to them in the sunny groves of 
dear old Castile. The wild grapes, too, whose clam- 
bering vines festooned the branches, were grateful to 
men who had grown u]3 among vineyards. Fifty 
leagues brought them, however, to the marge of a 
morass a league in width, and apparently impassable ; 

2* 



34 PIONEEES, PKEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

and hereabouts the natives, although not attacking, 
had concealed themselves, and were waiting o]3por- 
tnnities for opening the war. A pass was at length 
discovered, and after immense trouble, the army was 
conveyed across. But here they were effectually 
checked by deep lagoons and bayous that seemed 
interminable. 

Recrossing the swamp, in order to find a better 
line of march for the army, De Soto, who was ever in 
the van when difficulty pressed or danger threat- 
ened, at the head of a picked corps made an exten- 
sive tour of observation, and found what he sought. 
But himself and men were near starving ; for three 
days and nights they had little rest and less food. 
Supplies must be had, and the army brought up. 
Calling to him Gonzalo Silvestre, a bold young sol- 
dier, '' To you," he said, " belongs the best horse, 
therefore the harder work. Away, and hold not 
bridle until you have reached the camp. Bring us 
what we need and order the forces to join us. Be 
back by to-morrow night." Without a word Silvestre 
mounted and spurred away, calling to Juan Lopez, 
De Soto's page, to follow. Neither of these stout 
youths was one and twenty. Away over the twilight 
plain they sped. Fifteen leagues, tired as they and 
their steeds were, must be ridden that night. If 
morning found them in the swamp, almost certain 
death awaited them. Trusting more to the sagacity 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 35 

of their horses than to their own management to find 
the way on, throngh the thickening night rode onr 
tired cavaliers ; the silence broken by the moan of 
the cypress woods, the whir of a startled bird, the 
croaking of the monstrous frogs, and the plash of 
their horses' feet : and every now and then, as some 
camp-fire blazed on an island in the mire, revealing 
a party of savages engaged in feast or dance, a din as 
of an infernal orchestra broke npon their ears. The 
passage of a southern swamp is no easy feat at any 
time ; but at night, by tw^o youths, surrounded by 
hundreds of savage foes, it w^as an exploit worthy the 
hardiest. I mention it here to show the mettle of 
De Soto's troops. 

Undismayed by sight or sound, they still pressed 
forward until Lopez, grown reckless through fatigue 
and want of sleep, threw himself upon the ground, 
swearing he would go not a rood further until he had 
slept. Silvestre had nothing for it but to submit. 
Falling asleep himself in the saddle, he awoke to find 
it broad day. Hastily rousing his companion they 
started, but there was yet a league before them, 
and the Indians were not long in descrying the two 
horsemen and sounding the alarm. Forthwith the 
woods swarmed with painted furies. Knowing there 
was no resource left them but resolution and their 
horses, they pushed on at a gallop, their mail defend- 
in f]j them from the shafts of their enemies. The yells 



36 PIONEERS, PEEACIIERS AND PEOPLE 

and war-cries of tlie savages at length readied tlie 
camp, and thirty troopers rushed to their aid. Thus 
did these brave youtlis reach their goal in safety. 

Taking scarce an hour for rest, Silvestre was again 
in the saddle at the head of thirty lancers conveying 
two horseloads of supplies to the general; and not 
long after nightfall had reached the spot where he 
had left his commander the evenino; before. When 
the main body came up, they found the commandant 
encamped in the plain of Aguera, where maize was 
growing in abundance. Here they rested after their 
late privations. 

The Seminoles had now commenced hostilities in 
good earnest ; not indeed by pitched battle in the 
open field, but by ambuscades lurking in every 
thicket, picking off every little knot of Spaniards 
incautious enough to stray from the camp or line of 
march. ]N'evertheless they were all ardor to proceed, 
for some natives whom they had captured, in reply 
to their eager questions concerning the precious me- 
tals, assured them that in Ocali, a country to the 
northward, gold was so plenty that in war the people 
wore head-pieces of it. 

But Ocali is reached, and no gold is found ; only 
a poor small town, empty of people. The main body 
of the troops here came up with the commander, after 
a difficult and hungry march ; making up for their 
failing provisions by boiling a few beets which they 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 37 

found here and there in the lields, and chewing the 
young stems of the growing Indian corn. 

After brief delay, they press forward to the domi- 
nions of Yitachuco, a powerful chieftain, whose terri- 
tories are fifty leagues across. After some days of 
amity the Spaniards discover a perfidious plot to 
destroy them. Yitachuco has ordered a grand review 
of his warriors, ten thousand strong. At a signal 
twelve of his braves are to seize De Soto and the 
massacre is to commence. Trusting to take the Span- 
iards unaware, they deem their destruction easy. 
But forewarned, forearmed. Yitachuco is seized and 
the Spaniards charge the hordes of natives with head- 
long valor, mowing hundreds of them down upon the 
plain, whilst masses fly to adjoining lakes to swim for 
their lives. One of these lakes, wherein is the flower 
of Yitachuco's army, is surrounded by the troops, and 
although they ofi'er quarter, not a savage will submit. 
I^ight comes on ; the lake shore is vigilantly patrolled. 
By daylight flfty have yielded ; and at ten o'clock of 
the morning, after they had been in the water twenty- 
four hours, all the rest save seven come ashore. 
These hold out until three o'clock, when De Soto, un- 
willing that such steadfast valor should find a watery 
grave, sends twenty expert swimmers after them, 
who drag them to land more dead than alive. "When 
questioned, after their recovery, by the Adelantado, 
why they held out so stubbornly, four of them replied 



38 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

that they were captains, and that such should never 
surrender. The other three, neither of whom was 
over eighteen years of age, replied that they were 
sons of neighboring caciques, and would be caciques 
themselves some day, and that it did not behoove 
such to be guilty of cowardice. This was the 
indomitable spirit of the men De Soto came to con- 
quer. 

The warriors of Yitachuco were reduced to slavery ; 
still the untamed spirit of that chief revolved a plan 
for the extermination of the hated invaders. Com- 
municating his scheme secretly, it was soon known to 
all his braves. On the third day, while the Indians 
were waiting on their masters at dinner, at the sound 
of his war-whoop they were to attack their oppressors 
with whatever they could lay hands on, and at once 
destroy them. At the aj)pointed time, Yitachuco, 
who was seated near De Soto, sjDrang upon him 
and bore him to the earth, dealing him such a blow 
in the face as brought the blood in streams from 
nose, mouth, and eyes. Eaising his arm for another 
blow, w^hich would have been death to the Adelan- 
tado, he gav^e the whoop, which could be heard for a 
quarter of a league. At that critical moment a dozen 
swords and lances pierced him, and he fell lifeless to 
the earth. At the signal, his warriors fell upon their 
masters with pots, kettles, pestles and stools, and 
such arms as they could seize. But they were soon 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 39 

overpowered, for they fought in chains. Thns per- 
ished Yitachuco, and with him, in all, thirteen hundred 
of his brave warriors. Some of those slain performed 
extraordinary feats of valor. One, who was being led 
to the market-place to be murdered after the fight, 
first lifted up his master above his head and fiung 
him down so that he was stunned, then seized his 
sword, and, in the words of the Portuguese narrative, 
though " inclosed between fifteen or twenty footmen, 
made way like a bull, with the sword in his hand, 
until certain halberdiers of the governor came, which 
killed liim." Of the Indians who remained alive 
after the strife was over, about two hundred in num- 
ber, some were given as slaves to those w^ho had the 
best claim, and the rest were shot to death in cold 
blood, by the archers of De Soto's guard, or by the 
Indian allies. 

And here it may be well to say a word, once for 
all, of the treatment of the Indians by De Soto and 
his men. This was such as excuses these high-spi- 
rited barbarians a thousand times over for their con- 
stant and unflinching enmity to the Spaniards, and 
for all the savage arts used to oppose the invaders. 
As De Soto went from nation to nation, he was ac- 
customed to demand the services of large numbers of 
Indians as porters. Four thousand at one time were 
thus employed in transporting the baggage. This 
servile drudgery was sufiiciently intolerable to the 



4:0 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

warriors of the woods. But the Christians were ac- 
customed to make occasional expeditions for the ex- 
press purpose of procuring, not friendly porters, hut 
slaves to labor in chains. A hundred, including men 
and women, were thus talvcn in a single expedition, a 
little after the death of Yitachuco. These were led by 
irons about their necks, and were made to carry bag- 
gage, grind maize, and serve their Spanish masters in 
all things which a captive might do. Although the 
superior arms of the Spaniards enabled them to retain 
many of these captives, of whom some even accom- 
panied the remains of the expedition to Mexico, yet 
their stubborn and revengeful spirit gave their cap- 
tors constant annoyance. Sometimes, as one was led 
in chains to labor, he slew the Christian who led him 
and ran away with his gyves ; others filed their fet- 
ters through by night with a stone, and thus escaped. 
They undoubtedly gave all the information in their 
power to their countrymen in the woods, which must 
have aided them materially in their desperate attacks 
upon the Spaniards. 

De Soto, after the death of Yitachuco, bent his 
steps westward through the province of Osachile, 
where they still found their path infested by hostile 
savages, who stoutly contested every step of the way. 
At one broad morass, in particular, probably that at 
the head of the Estauhatchee Eiver, in the middle of 
which was a lagoon half a league wide, the Indians 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 41 

made a resolute stand. The path downward through 
the tangled, swampy forest, would admit of but two 
abreast, and was cleared under water to the same 
breadth, until the lagoon w^as too deep to be forded. 
This deep centre was passed by a slender and perilous 
bridge of logs tied together, and on the other side 
the same narrow, dangerous path ascended through 
another tangled, swampy forest. Just beyond this 
morass, the Indians had impeded a large extent of 
woods by felling logs and tying and interlacing them 
among the standing trees, upon a piece of ground 
very near where, ten years before, they had defeated 
Narvaez. After three days of dangerous and most 
fatiguing fighting, up to their waists in water, and 
afterward in the barricaded forests filled with their 
yelling, invisible foes, the wearied Spaniards forced a 
way through into a region less beset, and at length 
reached the chief village in the fertile and populous 
province of Appalache, near Tallahassee, where they 
took up their winter quarters. A scouting party dis- 
covered the sea at no great distance, and found the 
bay of Ante, from which the unfortunate I^arvaez 
had embarked. On the solitary coast were yet to be 
seen the coals of his forges, the skulls of his horses, 
and the troughs where he had fed them. The intre- 
pid Juan de Aiiasco was now dispatched, with thirty 
troopers, to Pedro Calderon, who had been left in 
command at the village of Hirrihigua, to order Jiim 



42 



to join the general with his men and supplies. The 
enterprise was beset with difficulties from which 
the boldest might shrink. To traverse a country 
peopled by a warlike race, whose undying antipathy 
to the Spaniards had been aroused, to thread a maze 
which had w^ell-nigh proved fatal to the main army, 
was a task which might well have made the stout- 
est quail. But, notwithstanding incredible hard- 
ships and ]3eril, the dauntless Juan succeeded. Pe- 
dro Calderon joined the army, and the two brigan- 
tines were brought around from Espiritu Santo to 
the Bay of Ante. These, exploring the coast west- 
ward, discovered the bay of Achusi, now Pensacola. 
Appointing this as a rendezvous, De Soto ordered 
Maldinado to sail for Cuba, and to return with 
supplies. 

At Appalache, or as it is also named, Anaica Appa- 
lache, not far from Tallahassee, De Soto went into 
quart- rs for the winter. The number of his men, 
his careful strengthening of his defences, and the pre- 
cautions which he took, enabled him to repel the in- 
cessant attacks of the natives, who, however, kept 
him in constant watchfulness, and picked off every 
Spaniard who strayed from the camp. As a means 
of preventing these attacks, he succeeded in obtain- 
ing possession of Capaii, the chief of Appalache, a 
man so fat that he could not walk; but after a short 
time, the cunning old chief crawled away on his 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 



43 



hands and knees from his guards while they were 
sleeping, and was never retaken. The hardy and 
fearless Spaniards, however, now well experienced in 
Indian warfare, kept watch and ward, repelled all 
attacks, and maintained themselves through the 
winter in comparative comfort. 

And now the second year of the expedition opens 
upon them. The land is in the bloom of spring. The 
new-born leaves seem to clap their hands in joy, as 
they dally with the soft south breeze ; the sward is tuft- 
ed with flowers of every hue ; the air is flooded with 
the mocking-bird's rich and ever changeful song ; the 
tender blade cleaves the mold ; and all the land is 
gay in the garments of the opening tropic year. Will 
not this man take her as a bride from God ? Kay ! 
unless she has yellow treasure on her breast. A yel- 
low grave shalt thou have, Hernando de Soto ! but no 

gold ! 

The captives tell them of Cofachiqui, a region to the 
northeast, where the precious earth can be had in 
plenty; their reports, doubtless, referring to the Geor- 
gia and South Carolina gold fields, which other au- 
thorities prove to have been early worked by the In- 
dians. 

Accompanied on part of their route by four thou- 
sand friendly Indians sent by the chief of Cofaqui to 
carry the baggage, and by as many more, under 
Patofa, the war-chief of Cofaqui, as escort ; with vari- 



44 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ous lot of hospitable welcome from friendly natives, 
and threatened starvation in immense pine barrens ; 
now in lonely devouring bogs, and then in fertile and 
cultivated tracts ; here feasting in the midst of plenty, 
there famishing in deserts of sand under the pine 
trees, that ofier them nothing but a tomb — thus they 
cross the present State of Georgia diagonally from 
southwest to northeast, until they strike the Savan- 
nah Eiver at Silver Bluff. On the opposite side was 
the town of Cofachiqiii, where ruled a youthful 
queen of rare grace and beauty. Gliding across the 
river in a canoe, attended by her principal men, she 
gave the strangers a courteous welcome, presenting 
to De Soto a j)earl necklace a yard and a half in 
length. Commanding her subjects to provide canoes 
and rafts, the army was transported across the 
river. 

Here the host remained encamped for some weeks, 
in friendly intercourse with this peaceful and hospit- 
able nation. In the tombs of their ancestors the 
Indians showed them vast treasures of pearls, com- 
puted to be not less than fourteen bushels, of which 
De Soto, though invited to take them all, preferred to 
select only a small number, leaving the remainder for 
a subsequent expedition. Here also, in a depository 
of Indian weapons annexed to a place of burial, they 
found a Spanish dagger and coat of mail, evidently 
the relics of the expedition of Lucas Yasquez 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 4:5 

De Ayllon, which had come to an end so sorrowful 
and so well deserved, fifteen years before. 

After a time, there came rumors of gold from the 
west; and bearing their specimen pearls, and inhos- 
pitably rewarding good with evil by seizing their 
beautiful and generous young hostess, in order that 
her authority might secure them good treatment and 
safety on the road, they march across the southern 
end of the Alleghany range to northwestern Georgia. 
On the road, the princess of Cofachiqui escaped, 
carrying a little treasure of valuable pearls. Travel- 
ling onward, they arrive at Chiaha, where they find 
a pot of honey, the first and last seen by the expedi- 
tion, and the only honey mentioned, it is believed, as 
existing within the limits of the United States before 
its settlement by the whites, who are usually sup- 
posed to have introduced the bee.* Questioning the 
chief of Chiaha, if he " had notice of any rich coun- 
trie," the Indian said that at Chisca, toward the north, 
there was copper, and another finer and softer metal. 
De Soto sends two envoys with Indian guides to find 
the place ; but they return with no gold, and with 
news of none, bearing a bufi'alo hide for their only 
prize, l^ext they travel through the great province 
of Cosa, supplied by the inhabitants with porters for 
the baggage, and with provisions. Resting in one 

* Peter Martyr says that the Mexicans had both honey and way. 
(Decades of the Ocean, Dec. 5, cap. 10.) 



40 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

place twentj days, and twenty-five in another, tliey 
pass througli this, the goodliest land they have yet 
seen, and bending southward, march by Talli&e, 
through the territory now called Alabama, toward 
the capital of a great chief called Tuscaloosa, whom 
they meet upon the border of his dominions, near the 
present city of Montgomery. Tuscaloosa, or Black 
"Warrior, a chieftain of a tribe probably the Choctaws, 
was the mightiest cacique in all this region ; ruling 
apparently over a great part of the present States of 
Alabama and Mississippi. He was so tall that when 
mounted upon the largest horse in the army, his feet 
nearly touched the ground. He was eminently 
handsome, although grave, stern, haughty and repel- 
lant in demeanor. This magnificent chief, who was 
born to rule, received De Soto, sitting upon a simple 
wooden throne, and shaded by the broad round 
standard of painted deerskin which was his ensign in 
war. With a laconic welcome, he set out to guide 
the Spanish commander to his capital, Mauvila, or 
Maubila, situated ten days' march to the southward ; 
a reminiscence of whose name exists in that of the 
city of Mobile. To insure good treatment from the 
natives, after his custom, De Soto surrounded the 
Black Warrior w^ith a guard, professedly of honor, 
but really to hold him as a hostage. This the proud 
chief at once discovered; but betrayed no sign of dis- 
pleasure. At length, within a day's march of 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 47 

Maubila, De Soto with a hundred horse and a hun- 
dred foot, accompanied by Tuscaloosa, pushed for- 
ward to the capital, leaving the remainder of the 
force to be brought up by Luis de Moscoso, master 
of the camp. The Adelantado apprehended that 
danger threatened at Mauvila, and was in haste to 
resolve his doubt. Reaching the town early in the 
morning, he found it a walled place. A stockade of 
great tree trunks had been formed, transverse beams 
had been lashed to these by means of vines, and over 
all was a stucco of mud hardened in the sun. At 
every fifty paces were towers on the walls, capable 
of holding eight bowmen. Many of the trees in the 
stockade had survived transplanting, and were in full 
leaf, giving to the fortification a strange beauty. The 
houses were built on broad streets, and although but 
eighty in number were yet so large that each would 
hold a thousand persons. In the centre was a great 
public square. The town was built in the midst of a 
plain, finely situated upon a noble blufi* of the Ala- 
bama River, whose peaceful current was seen in the 
distance gliding between beautiful banks. The 
other margin of the plain was skirted by a forest. 
!N'ear the western wall was a beautiful limpid lake. 

In obedience to the orders of Tuscaloosa, booths 
had been erected outside the walls for the accommo- 
dation of the army, while the chief house of the town 
had been set apart for De Soto and his oflicers. 



48 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Alighting, the proud chief moved haughtily off 
toward his peoj^le, to see, as he said, that all was in 
readiness for his guests. ]^ot returning, and the 
houses seeming to be filled with warriors and young 
girls — many of whom were exceedingly beautiful — 
but no old people or children appearing, De Soto's 
apprehensions were quickened. Desirous of regain- 
ing the person of Tuscaloosa, he sent Juan Ortiz to 
announce that the Adelantado was waiting breakfast 
for the chief. Thrice was the message sent, but no 
chief appeared. At last a w^arrior, quitting one of 
the houses, shouted a threatening defiance to the 
Spaniards. Baltazar de Gallegos, who was near at 
hand, cut him down. The warrior's son attempting 
to avenge him, shared his fate. And now began the 
fierht in frigihtful earnest. Indians swarmed from 
every lodge, and the earth seemed suddenly covered 
with. them. De Soto and his men, fighting despe- 
rately, fell back outside the walls to where the horses 
were picketed. Gaining these, they flung themselves 
into the saddle and fiercely charged the foe. Back- 
ward and forward swept the tide of battle. Some- 
times, driven by flights of deadly arrows, the Span- 
iards retreat to the edge of the forest. Then rallying, 
they come thundering down, with the war cry " San- 
tiago and our Lady," upon the hordes of naked 
savages awaiting them. These, borne down by the 
terrible shock, retreat to the walls and close the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 49 

ponderous gates, but send clouds of deadly missiles 
against their enemies. Hour after hour does the bat- 
tle rage. The mail, the weapons and the discipline 
of the Spaniards give them a fearful advantage 
against the naked bodies and undrilled array of the 
savages ; but the odds of numbers are overwhelming, 
two hundred against thousands — for Moscoso has not 
arrived. He and his men loiter in the shady glades, 
picking grapes and flowers, singing songs of dear old 
Castile, light of heart that they shall soon hear ncAvs 
from Cuba and receive abundant supplies — for it is 
now October, the month in which Maldinado is to be 
at Pensacola, and hence to that place is less than 
thirty leagues. As thus they loiter through the plea- 
sant woods, the sunny river peeping every now and 
then between the branches, the land seemed as 
lovely as the valley of the Xenil, outspread beneath 
the towers of the Alhambra. 

But suddenly the distant sound of trumpet-calls, 
and shouts and savage war-cries are faintly heard, far 
in front ; and soon they discern a column of smoke 
slowly rising into the air in the distance. There is a 
battle ! 

The word is passed along the line ; stragglers fall 
in, and at a rapid pace come up the reinforcements. 
The battle rages with redoubled fury ; the Spaniards 
dash at the gates and force them. The streets and 
the square are filled with combatants and corpses. 
3 



50 PIONEEES, PKEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

The Christian's war-cry joins with the deafening 
shout of the Indians. They fall like grain before the 
mower's scythe nnder the swords and lances of their 
foemen ; yet no one cries for quarter. The only tar- 
gets which the steel clad Spaniards offer the Indian 
archers is mouth and eyes and the joints of the 
armor. The Indian women join their husbands and 
lovers in the fight, and are the fiercest of the throng. 
Everywhere De Soto is seen in the thickest of the 
melee. Kising in his stirrups to deal a fatal blow, an 
arrow strikes him in the thigh through the openings of 
his armor. Tlienceforth he fights standing in his stir- 
rups. But the Spaniards have fired the town, and the 
flames spread fearfully, enwrapping every dwelling. 
As their forked tongues lapped^up Maubila and 
its brave people, the sun, hidden by clouds of 
smoke, was casting a sickly glare from behind 
the tree-tops. The tragedy is finished, l^ine hours 
did the battle rage. At least five thousand Indians 
are slain. "Nov is the plight of the Spaniards envi- 
able. Eighty-two of their best w^arriors have fallen, 
while among the survivors seventeen hundred griev- 
ous wounds are distributed, and there is but one 
surgeon in the camp, and he unskilled. Forty-two 
horses, mourned as companions and friends, are slain. 
All the camp furniture, baggage and supplies, the 
pearls and trophies of savage wealth which had 
been placed in the houses or carelessly cast down 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 51 

about the walls, are consumed ; and worst of all, the 
wlieaten flour and wine, preserved with sedulous 
care for the Eucharist, are burned also. 

A dismal night, indeed, was that after the battle 
of Maubila. Numbers of the wounded died before 
their hurts could be attended to. Eight days they 
remained, attending on the disabled, in wretched 
sheds within the town; and then, carrying them to 
huts constructed on the open ground without, they 
remained twenty days longer, ere the troops are in 
marching order, having recovered from the wounds 
of the battle, and measurably from a strange disease, 
occasioned by want of salt. This commenced with 
fever and speedily corrupted the whole body, end- 
ing, after three or four days, in a fatal mortification 
of the intestines. The use of the ashes of a certain 
plant was a preventive of this disorder ; yet it de- 
stroyed, says Garcilasso de la Yega, as many as sixty 
of the Spaniards in one year. 

But whither shall they go ? Intelligence has 
reached the camp that Arias and Maldinado are 
arrived at Ochus, their appointed rendezvous, but 
seven days' march to the southeast, with provisions 
and supplies for founding a colony. At first, De 
Soto is filled with joy, for he sees at hand the means 
of establishing the settlement which he has always 
designed to make the headquarters for his further 
search after gold. But he is told that the army is 



62 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

full of murmurs at their endless and profitless hard- 
ships, and that his leaders and men are proposing to 
seize the opportunity, and sail for Mexico or Peru. 
There is gold for him who can win it ; here are only 
toil, wounds, danger, disease, death. The Adelantado 
sees that, once at the seacoast, his army will desert 
him. ITo new troops will undertake an enterprise 
already branded with failure ; and he has no second 
vast fortune to embark in the undertaking. He has 
staked his all on this one throw — ^fortune, fame, 
hope, honor, life. Shall he now slink back to Cuba, 
a hundred of his brave companions dead, poor in 
purse, vanquished by the poverty and the savage- 
ness of these wild forests and grassy savannas? 
These bitter reflections drive him to a desperate 
resolution, which he seems here deliberately to have 
formed, and silently to have adhered to until just 
before his death ; namely, to send home no news of 
himself until he had found the rich regions which he 
had set out to seek. And, as if he had at the same 
time been hopeless of success, and acted merely in 
shame and desperation, his demeanor was thence- 
forth changed. Always stern and reserved, he grows 
now moody, silent, savage. The word of command 
is given, and the line of march resumed to the north- 
west, back into the wild forests, away from ships and 
home. And none dare demand a reason from the 
gloomy and severe commander 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 63 

They resumed their march Sunday, Nov. 18, 1540. 
Crossing the Black Warrior and Tombigbee rivers, 
they at length reached the heart of the Chickasaw 
country, in the northwestern part of Mississippi, 
where it was determined to winter in a village called 
Chicasa. De Soto, on one occasion, treated the 
natives to hog meat, whereupon they acquired such 
a taste for it that his pig-pens were constantly 
invaded. He punished some of the hog-thieves 
severely, and this, together with the robberies and 
assaults committed upon the persons and property 
of the Chickasaws, kindled the wrath of that warlike 
people, and they determined upon summary revenge. 
They attacked the village at night, firing the houses, 
and succeeded for a time in throwing the Spaniards 
into confusion. Many of the latter were slain, 
together with a number of horses, which were more 
dreaded than the Spaniards themselves. But the 
natives were routed, with great loss, before daylight. 
It was, however, a victory dearly purchased, for the 
Spaniards lost forty men, fifty horses, and three 
hundred of their four hundred swine, besides nearly 
all their remaining clothes and effects ; and were left 
in such evil plight, that, had the Indians attacked 
them again the next night, they must have won an 
easy victory. Attributing this damaging surprise to 
the negligence of the camp-master, Luis de Moscoso, 
who had already been so dilatory at the battle of 



64 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Manbila, De Soto deposed him, and appointed Bal- 
tasar de Gallegos in his stead. Removing to Chic- 
kasilla, a league distant, the Spaniards erected a 
forge, and re-tempered their swords which had been 
much injured by the fire, made saddles, horse-furni- 
ture, and lances, and wove mats of the long grass to 
shield them from the cold, which in March was still 
piercing. These mats, in their future wayfarings, 
served a valuable purpose, as bucklers, to protect 
them from the arrows of their enemies. At Chicka- 
silla they wintered, amid cold and snow, and in great 
want of clothing. 

As the spring of the third year of the expedition 
opened, the fierce Chickasaws renewed their attacks, 
but were repulsed ; and on the 25th of April, the 
army set forward for a third summer of wandering 
after gold, marching northwestward. At the for- 
tress of Alibamo, on one of the head branches of the 
Yazoo, the Indians made a resolute stand. But the 
invincible Spaniards took it by storm, and put to the 
Bword all who fell into their hands. Hence to the 
northwestern corner of Mississippi, or the south- 
western of Tennessee, they journeyed, through dark 
forests and deep swamps, until they struck a mighty 
river, which they named Rio Grande. Alvar Nunez 
and the survivors of the expedition of JSTarvaez must 
have crossed it much lower down ; but we are accus- 
tomed to name De Soto as the first European who 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 55 

set foot on tlie banks of tlie Mississippi — for this was 
their Eio Grande. 

In April, 1541, they stood npon the bluffs which 
overlook that sublime stream, rushing from the icy 
regions of the north to a summer sea. This was the 
pioneer pilgrimage of European civilization to its 
banks, the advanced guard of that innumerable mul- 
titude which was here to be gathered together to 
make another attempt at solving the problem of 
man's relation to the earth, his neighbor and his 
God. 

Building boats, they crossed the river, and after 
four days' march into the wilderness beyond, came 
to the village of Casqui, or Casquin, supposed to 
have been inhabited by the Kaskaskias Indians, 
afterward settled in Illinois. This village was in a 
province also called Casqui, and governed by a 
cacique of the same name. The chief inhabited a 
village about seven leagues further on, whei'e he 
hospitably received the army, and provided it with 
provisions and quarters. 

During the encampment here, the chief suppli- 
cated De Soto to pray to his God for rain, which was 
much needed. Hereupon the Spanish commander 
caused a vast cross to be erected, in a commanding 
situation, on a lofty hill near the river, and conse- 
crated it by a solemn religious ceremony, in which 
both Spaniards and Indians joined. Then De Soto 



66 PIONEERS, PEEACHEE8 AND PEOPLE 

endeavored to make Casqui understand how prayers 
should be offered to the one invisible God, and 
related to him the life and sufferings of Christ. 

As the intonations of the Litany, and the solemn 
strains of Te Deum laudamus rose upon the air, the 
children of the forest took up the strain, with plain- 
tive voice and uplifted eyes, invoking the white 
man's God. Here, then, upon the shore of the 
Father of Waters, in the northeastern corner of Ar- 
kansas, was the symbol of our religion first planted, 
eighty years before a Puritan had touched the rock at 
Plymouth. And as if to substantiate the instructions 
of the Spanish commander, a plenteous shower of 
rain came down that very night. 

De Soto delayed some days in the village of Cas- 
qui, and then set out northward, for the village of 
Pacaha or Capaha, who was at feud with Casqui, and 
whom the latter trusted to destroy by means of the 
Spaniards. He accompanied the latter, with his 
warriors, for that purpose ; and did actually destroy 
numbers of his people, and laid waste his town. 
But De Soto, on his arrival, at once put a stop to 
these proceedings, and, after considerable difficulty, 
induced Pacaha to return home, and issued orders 
that none should do any injury to the inhabitants of 
the province or to their possessions. In this place he 
rested forty days, during which he sent two men to a 
hill country, forty leagues westward, where, the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. '67 

Indians said, tliere was mncTi salt, and much yellow 
metal. Tliej retm^ned, in eleven days, with a quan- 
tity of rock salt and some copper, but no gold. The 
Lidians also said that northward, and beyond the line 
of their exploring trip, the country was cold, barren 
and overrun with buffaloes. 

De Soto, therefore, resolved to return to the village 
of Casqui, and thence to strike southward for a coun- 
try which the Indians called Quigaute, and repre- 
sented as extensive and wealthy. Here he remained 
a little time, and then, turning westward, entered 
upon that long and dreary circuit in the regions of 
the Arkansas and Eed Elvers, which at last brought 
him back to the shores of the Mississippi, to die. 
He passed through Coligoa, at the foot of a moun- 
tain, beyond which he fancied there might be gold ; 
came to Palisema, in the country of Cay as ; to Tunica, 
where were found salt lakes, from which the army 
furnished itself with a quantity of good salt ; to Tula 
or Tulla, whose inhabitants, differing from all they 
had met before, were exceedingly ill-looking, hav- 
ing immense heads, artificially narrowed at the top, 
and faces horribly tattooed ; whose ferocity was 
more brutal and untamable than that of any race 
they had met before, and who could not be ter- 
rified by threats and slaughter, nor cajoled by gifts. 
Thence they marched to Utiangue or Autiamque, 
where, fortifying part of a large village, the forlorn 

3* 



58 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

Spanish liost went into winter-qnarters for the third 
time. The cold was severe, the snow deep, and the 
attacks of the savages incessant ; but as food and 
fuel were plentiful, the condition of the troops was 
on the whole quite comfortable. 

In Autiamque died Juan Ortiz, the interpreter — 
an irreparable loss to De Soto, who thenceforth 
found very great difficulties in maintaining even a 
circuitous and obscure intercourse with the natives. 

"When the spring returned, there remained, of the 
magnificent host of a thousand men, only three hun- 
dred soldiers, besides non-combatants ; and of three 
hundred and fifty horses, only forty, and many of 
these lame and useless, and all unshod during the 
year past, for want of iron. Fatigue, sickness, priva- 
tion, and the weapons of the fierce savages of theMo- 
bilian and Muscogee races, had destroyed the rest. 
And even this scanty remainder were destitute and 
discouraged. The disastrous fires of Maubila and 
Chicasa had devoured clothing, arms, and wealth. 
They were now dressed in skins, and their weapons 
were, in many cases, such as they had wrought out 
themselves. His goodly armament thus worn out 
and wasted in endless hostilities with the savages, 
and thus rapidly diminishing, and his hopes of gold 
so long disappointed, even the obstinate and perse- 
vering courage and hopefulness of De Soto began to 
fail ; and he at length decided to return to the Mis- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 69 

sissippi, fortify himself there, build vessels, and send 
to Cuba for snj)plies and men. 

The troops accordingfy set forward from Auti- 
amqne on Monday, March 6, 1542, being now the 
fourth year of their wanderings ; and going through 
Ayas, or Ayays, and Tultelpina, reached Amilco, capi- 
tal of the province of that name, and standing in the 
midst of a country more fertile and populous than 
any they had yet seen, except Cosa and Appalache. 
Hence they proceeded to Guachoya, on the Missis- 
sippi, apparently at the mouth of the Arkansas, 
where De Soto proposed to establish himself and 
build his vessels. 

Setting the necessary preparations on foot, De Soto, 
having heard of a certain powerful chieftain called 
Quigalta, or Quigaltanqui, ruling a vast province on 
the opposite side of the Great River, sent an embassy 
to him, to say that he, De Soto, was the child of the 
sun ; that all men along his road had hitherto obeyed 
and served him ; and requiring Quigalta to accept 
his friendship and come to him, bringing something 
valuable in token of love and obedience. But the 
chief dryly and sourly answered, that if De Soto 
were the child of the sun, he might dry up the river, 
and he would believe him ; and as to the rest of the 
message, that he was wont to visit nobody, but that 
all were wont to visit him, and pay tribute to him. 
Tliat, therefore, if De Soto desired to see him, it was 



60 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

best that he should cross the river himself and come ; 
that if he came in peace, he should be received with 
special good will ; but if in war, he, Quigalta, would 
wait for him in the same place, and would not shrink 
one foot back for him or any other. 

But when the messenger came back with this keen 
and haughty reply, the Adelantado was already on a 
sick-bed, confined with a slow fever. Ill as he was, 
he was irritated at the bold savage, and still more 
that he was unable to cross the river and seek him, 
to abate his pride. But the Indians were so nume- 
rous and so fierce, his own forces now so reduced, and 
the current of the vast river so furious and dangerous^ 
that he was fain to think upon fair means, instead of 
foul. 

And even while lying here, sick and discouraged, 
while the fever grew upon him, De Soto performed 
an action most characteristic of the deliberate, bloody- 
minded, brutal carelessness with which the Spaniards 
of that day regarded the Indians. Many reports 
came in of proposed attacks upon the camp, some- 
times from one side of the river, sometimes from the 
other. In order, therefore, to intimidate the tribes 
about him, De Soto determined to devote one of 
them to destruction, and accordingly, sending a suffi- 
cient force, surprised the town of Amilco. The fierce 
troopers burst into this j)eaceful and unsuspecting 
village, with orders not to spare the life of any male ; 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 61 

and not only was tins cruel order fulfilled, but sun- 
dry of the soldiers slew all wlio came in their way, 
though the surprise was so complete that not an 
arrow was shot at any Christian. This savage butch- 
ery was an astonishment even to the Indian allies 
who accompanied the troops, and served no good 
turn ; and it was afterward noticed that those most 
active in it showed themselves cowards where true 
valor was needed, and that shameful deaths were 
visited on them in retribution. 

But all the earthly projects of De Soto now 
drew to a close. Deeply feeling his fatal error in 
wandering so far from the sea, grieved at the losses 
and sufferings of his men, harassed with anxious fore- 
bodings as to the future, and his powerful frame at 
last undermined and shattered by the destructive cli- 
matic fever, he now sinks rapidly ; and helpless and 
liopeless, one of the noblest cavaliers of the age lies 
dying in a rude Indian wigwam. Instead of gaining 
vast treasures, he has lost them, and found no more. 
Instead of founding an empire, he has exterminated a 
savage tribe or two, but has scarcely retained his au- 
thority over the relics of his small and shattered army. 
Instead of winning world-wide renown, he has dis- 
appeared from view in those vast western wilder- 
nesses, and for years has not even been heard of by 
Christian men. A sad and disastrous close for an expe- 
dition whose outset was so splendid and so hopeful I 



62 



And now liis last hour draws nigh, and with the 
steady courage of a soldier and a Christian, for such 
he was to the best of his ability, whatever were his 
faults, Hernando de Soto calmly prepares to close up 
all worldly transactions, and to die. He makes his 
will ; requests his officers to elect a captain to suc- 
ceed him, and when they, in turn, desire him to 
choose, appoints Luis Moscoso de Alvarado, remem- 
bering only the virtues and ability of that captain, 
and no longer preserving anger for the errors for 
which he had removed him from his place of camp- 
master. He causes the officers and troops to swear 
obedience to their new leader, and then, calling them 
to him by twos and threes, and the soldiers by twen- 
ties and thirties, thanks them for their love and loy- 
alty to him, expressing his regret at leaving them 
unremunerated for all their toils ; charges them to 
remain at peace with each other, and asks pardon for 
any wrong or offence of which he may have been 
guilty toward them ; and so, with tenderness, he bids 
them all farewell. Thus, resigning his soul to God, 
and confessing his sins, three years absent from Donna 
Isabella, and in the forty-third year of his age, on the 
21st of May, 1542, perished in the wilderness, Her- 
nando de Soto. 

Anxious to conceal his death from the natives, and 
thus to preserve the spell of his name, his companions, 
with whispered prayers, and silent but fast-falling 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 63 

tears, buried him in tlie darkness in a pit, near tlie 
village of Gnaclioya, where they were encamped. 
But fearing lest the body should be discovered by the 
savages, and subjected to inhuman outrage, they dis- 
interred it the following night, and, having prepared 
a coffin of evergreen oak, bore it to the middle of the 
Great River and sank it in a hundred feet of water. 
A sullen plunge, a murmured Itequiescat in jpace ! 
from priest and cavalier, and the canoes return to land. 
The army mourned as if every man had lost a 
father. 

l!Tevertheless, they resolved to abandon his plans 
and strike westward, thus hoping to reach Mexico ; 
not seeming to know that their latitude was far north 
of that. Westward for months they wandered 
through swamp and canebrake, now in luxuriant 
meadows and again in waste howling wildernesses. 
"Waylaid by savages, famishing, nearly naked, they 
kept on until the eye was filled with mountains tow- 
erins: to heaven. Back in haste ; no Mexico is here. 
Returning, they are overtaken by fall rains, and winter 
rigors. Jaded, dispirited, miserable, their numbers 
reduced to thrfee hundred and fifty, they reach Minoya, 
on the Mississippi, late in the year. Here they 
summon all their remaining energies and resources, 
and gird themselves for a last desperate struggle with 
fate. By spring they have built seven brigantines, 
of short and thin planks, insufficiently nailed together, 



64: PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

undecked, and calked only with, bark and grass. In 
these, on the second day of July, 1543, they de]3art, 
three hundred and twenty-two Spaniards all told, 
taking twenty-two of the horses alive, and the rest 
salted for provisions ; and leaving the wretched inha- 
bitants of Minoya starving to death for want of the 
maize which the Spaniards had used for subsistence 
and for provisioning their vessels. They also leave 
at their place of embarkation ^ve hundred Indian 
slaves, retaining a number, including twenty or thirty 
women. Committing themselves to the current, they 
float down the river for nineteen days and nights, beset 
a great part of the way by a flotilla of canoes filled 
with hostile Indians who kept up incessant assaults 
upon them, by which they lost all their surviving 
horses and over fifty men ; having now no weapons 
left except a few swords and shields, and being thus 
helpless against the arrows of the savages. This voy- 
age down the river w^as subsequently computed at 
five hundred leagues. 

They reach the Gulf, and here trusting themselves 
in their frail brigantines to the treacherous deep, 
after a painful and eventful voyage, they reach the 
river and village of Panuco in Mexico. They are 
kindly received, and Mendoza, the viceroy, causes 
them to be brought to Mexico, where they are treated 
with much attention and honor. Less than three 
hundred survivors of that gallant expedition which 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 65 

four years before had set out from Cuba witli much 
music and rejoicing, now apppeared, haggard, black- 
ened, with tangled hair, skins of wild beasts almost 
their only covering, a wretched band of wrecked, 
despairing men. And even now, the hearts of nearly 
all lust for Florida again. Each curses his fellow as 
the cause of his leaving that land, which they aver to 
be the goodliest on which the sun shines. Fierce 
words and fiercer blows are given, and thus amid 
execrations and contentions these worthies disappear 
from history. 

A word of Donna Isabel, fair hapless lady. Faith- 
fully had she sent Captains Maldinado and Gomez 
Arias with ships and plentiful supplies in the fall of 
1540. Waiting for a long time, they then coasted 
east and west in search of intelligence concerning the 
Adelantado. The next spring they came again, and 
the next, and the next, spending each summer in 
searching for some traces of the ill-fated party. At 
length in 154:3 the tireless captains touched at Yera 
Cruz, and heard the sad tidings. Hastening to 
Havana, they broke the news to the Donna Isabel. 
Having thus long borne up against racking suspense 
and torturing doubt, hoping against hope, she now 
yielded, and died in the prime of her glorious beauty, 
the victim of ill-fated love and man's wild ambition. 

Oh, river of the future ! thy discovery was made 
at heavy cost, of gallant lives and a broken heart I 



66 PIONEEKS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

Thy yellow waves are the enduring sepulchre of Her- 
nando de Soto, and the murmur of thy floods the 
ever-chanted du-ge of the lady Isabel, the noble and 
faithful wife ! 



Lecture II. 
MARQUETTE & LA SALLE, 



MARQUETTE XNJ) LA SALLE. 

Whatever else Jesuitism may have done, it has 
given to History one of the noblest of those armies of 
Heroes and Martyrs, with the record of whose deeds 
and sufferings its pages are glorified. N'owhere 
does the love of souls, the contempt of danger and 
death, patient endurance of hunger, cold, nakedness 
and bonds, serene self-possession under stripes, and 
the joyful welcome of martyrdom, stand out in more 
illustrious contrast to the ordinary sordid and selfish 
phases of our nature, than in the early mission story 
of one region of this continent. 

In the first settlement of Canada the two classes 
which most enlist our interest are the missionaries 
and the voyageurs — the one giving themselves to 
the service of the Church, and man's salvation ; the 
other, almost equally energetic and hardy, opening 
the resources of the Fur-trade, and thus connecting, 
by the ties of commerce, the kings and nobles of the 
old world with the hunting-grounds and wigwams 
of the Algonquins and Dacotahs, by the banks of 
Superior and on the headwaters of the Mississippi. 



70 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Trade carried its votaries far into the wilderness, 
over pathless snows, through interminable forests, 
lip mighty rivers, over the bosom of lakes that seemed 
like seas. The spell of gold was mighty then, as 
now ; bnt for once Traffic was outdone by Keligion, 
and the Cross inspired men with a daring enterprise 
and lofty resolution, such as the world has seldom 
witnessed. 

Father Dreuillettes penetrated the forest lying 
between the St. Lawrence and the Kennebec, down 
which he floated to the sea. Sojourning with the 
savages ten months, bearing them company in their 
hunts, suffering hardships like a good soldier, every- 
where showing fortitude and courage, patience and 
strength equal to their own, he completely won their 
love and reverence. Youges, taken prisoner by the 
relentless Iroquois, was made to run the gaimtlet 
three times, suffered torment of many kinds, saw his 
converts inhumanly butchered, cheered them by his 
ministrations of pitying love, although by so doing 
he exposed himself to their fate ; and raising the 
chaunt in his captive journeyings, provoking the 
brutality of his persecutors by steadfastness, carving 
the cross on the trees near Albany, he showed him- 
self faithful in all things. At length liberated by the 
Dutch of New York, he sailed for France, as the only 
way by which he could reach Canada again, 
returned thither, went upon an embassy of peace to 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 71 

his old tormentors the Mohawks, and there he met 
the death of which he had had presentiment. 

Daniel fell beneath the remorseless blows of the 
same barbarians, as he knelt in pious ministry to the 
spiritual needs of his Huron converts. Breboeuf, a 
great strong man whose brawny courage knew no 
fear, whose ruling passion was a cupidity for martyr- 
dom, could yet in humble patience bide his Master's 
time. Employing himself the while in uninterrupted 
missionary labors, he is taken with his associate L'Alle- 
mand, a man of delicate frame, but dauntless cour- 
age, by the Iroquois, in the midst of their neophytes. 
They refuse to save themselves by flight, lest the 
offices of the Church should thereby be lost to the 
dying around them. Breboeuf is tied to a stake, and 
exhorting his tormentors to repentance, and his con- 
verts to be faithful even until death, his brother 
priest is led before him robed in a garment of bark 
filled with rosin. As the torch is applied the 
unshrinking L'Allemand exclaims, " "We are made a 
spectacle this day unto men and angels." Breboeuf s 
holy counsels are checked, as his upper lip is cut off, 
and hot irons thrust down his throat. He too is set 
on fire, and then boiling water is poured over both 
to extinguish the flames. Breboeuf entered through 
the gates into the City above, Jerusalem, the Mother 
of us all, in three hours. L'Allemand lingered 
seventeen ; then he too joined that company which 



72 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

no man can number, that liave come up out of great 
tribulation. When we hear of faith and love like 
theirs, can we say, contemptuously, " they were 
Jesuits," and forget that they were also Christians 
sealing their testimony with their blood ? 

As the ranks were thus thinned, they were filled 
by others, who pressed forward, coveting to wear the 
thorny crown, persuaded that in due time it would 
become a crown of glory. Among these was Jaines 
Marquette, a young Frenchman. Born in the small 
bat stately city of Laon, perched upon a hill-side 
in the provence of Aisne, his family name was a lus- 
trous one in the annals of France before his time, 
and has been since. Our own land is indebted to 
others, bearmg it, besides himself. Three Marquettes 
fell in the French army which aided in our Kevolu- 
tionary struggle. 

Born in 1637, our young Frenchman's early years 
were blessed by the care of a devout, godly mother, 
who infused into his mind a reverent simplicity and 
an ardent love which kept him pure unto the end. 
From our mothers we borrow our best treasures. 
They lend in gladness, not dreaming of return. But 
they receive a hundred fold in this world, and in 
the world to come life everlasting. 

At seventeen Marquette renounced the world and 
became a Jesuit. Twelve years were spent in teach- 
ing, and then, burning with a holy zeal to do good to 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 73 

the heathen, his mind inflamed by the devotion of 
Francisco Xavier, the model he had chosen for imita- 
tion and emulation, he embarked for Canada in 1666. 
Buoyant with health and hopes of usefulness, the 
young missionary touched the shores of the new 
world. Behind him rolled the sea which separated 
him from home, friends and mother. Before him lay 
a wilderness continent, with its mighty lakes and 
rivers, its inaccessible forests and endless plains, now 
clad in tufted verdure and then garmented in snow 
and ice. The roving tribes that peopled the land were 
savages ; but they had souls to be saved. True, their 
tomahawks had drank the blood of his brethren, and 
their scalping knives were yet red with the gore of 
martyrs. Still they had immortal souls which might 
be won for Christ. Wa s it not work for an angel ? 
Surely it was for a Christian disciple. But he might 
perish ? "No matter. Would he not fall with his face 
toward Zion, die where he might ? So he girded up 
his loins and betook him to his labor. 

'Not in haste are life's great achievements 
wrought ; but slowly, and by sure degrees. So Mar- 
quette first patiently studied the Indian dialects, be- 
coming a learner that he might fitly teach. 

He was at first destined to a mission far to the 
northward, and we find him in 1667 at Three Elvers, 
preparing himself under Father Dreuillettes. But 
this design was abandoned and he was next ap- 

4 



74 PIONEERS, PREACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

pointed to the Ottawa Mission — as that of Lake 
Superior was then called — to labor with Father 
Allouez. Quebec had been founded by Champlain 
in 1608. Le Barron, a RecoUet missionary who 
came with him, had ascended the Ottawa River, and 
reached Lake Huron. In 1629 Canada fell into the 
hands of the English, but in 1631 it was restored to 
France. In 1639 Nicolet, interpreter of the colony, 
had descended the Wisconsin to within three days' 
sail of the Mississippi, or sea^ as he understood the 
Indian name " Great Water," to mean. Two years 
later Isaac Yonges and Charles Rambout, Jesuits, 
stood upon Sault Ste. Marie, looking down upon the 
land of the Sioux and the basin of the Mississippi, 
with hearts longing to enter it. But an Iroquois war, 
the next year, frustrated their design. Thus, while 
the Dutch of IsTew Netherlands were huddled around 
Fort Orange, five years before Eliot addressed his 
first Indian audience six miles from Boston, and 
while the country between Massachusetts Bay and 
Connecticut was almost a pathless wilderness, Jesuit 
Fathers stood upon the water-shed dividing the 
streams of the Atlantic from those of the Gulf. 
Honor to whom honor is due ! " There is nothing 
new under the sun " is a well-worn adage which 
comes to us from a man of many experiences. And 
as our knowledge increases, the same cry is more 
than once forced from our lips. You will pardon me 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 75 

I trust, for diverging from mj narrative to furnisli 
you another example of its truth. Two of the chief 
movements of our time were antedated on this Con- 
tinent, nearly two centuries. I refer to the Ivnow 
N'othing and the Maine Law parties. About 1670 it 
was made death, by a statute of New York, for a 
Jesuit to plant foot on soil of that colony ; and 
about the same period there arose a formidable dis- 
pute in Canada between the civil and clerical 
authorities, as to whether the vending of ardent 
spirits to the Indians should be allowed. Tlie ques- 
tion embroiled the colony, and was hotly contested 
for a long time. It even served to discolor the his- 
toric page of the time. At length the church side 
of the case was shown to be unconstitutional, or 
something of that sort, and the Indians were mur- 
dered the same as before, public opinion settling 
down into what is now the verdict of juries in rail- 
road accidents — ISTobody to blame. 

But to return to our young missionary, whom we 
left in Canada, a little over thirty years of age, about 
to embark for his field of labor, the Ottawa Mission. 
His ultimate destination was the founding an estab- 
lishment among the Illinois ; but the novice must be 
tried in a vineyard already opened, before he 
attempts to plant one himself. 

The south shore of S aperior near Ste. Marie, and then 
La Pointe, are the centres of his operations. Allouez 



76 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

has gone to Green Bay, and so up Fox Eiver, and he 
is alone with the savages. But nol the less faithfully 
does he labor, that he has no superior to overlook 
him, nor brother to give him sympathy. On him, as 
on all, the Master's eye is fixed, always on ns, never 
off ns ; and the exceeding great reward, does it not 
await the faithful workman's toils ? And fellowship ; 
has he not one ever near him, in his lonely lodge, 
who is touched with the feelings of his infirmities, 
who was tempted in all points even as he ? 

It is pleasant and helpful too, to read the unvar- 
nished tale of this simple minded man's efforts to do 
good to the untutored children of the forest ; how he 
taught the lessons of virtue and chastity, of forbear- 
ance and forgiveness of injuries ; how he strove to win 
them from their idle superstitions to the worship of 
the living and true God; to go with him as he 
administers the holy rite of baptism to a dying child, 
or speaks kind words to sick and suffering men and 
women ; to be near him as he devoutly performs the 
offices of the church or expounds the mysteries of the 
faith in his little thatched chapel of bark. He with- 
stands the proud and willful to their face ; the way- 
ward he admonishes firmly but gently ; he cheers the 
penitent and encourages the desponding ; everywhere 
he seems striving to possess his soul in patience, 
to do the work of an evangelist, and make full proof 
of his ministry. Ever and anon news of the great 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 77 

river and tlie miglitj tribes inhabiting its banks 
readies him, and he longs to discover it and them. 
His heart yearns for the Illinois ; for are they not his 
people ? But the time has not come yet. The dis- 
coverer of the age must wait — as who must not? 
History were indeed a dead letter — were less service- 
able by half than the debris of perished races, 
whereon the geologist reads the autograph of every 
separate cycle — did we not gather from it words and 
thoughts to inspire ourselves with strength. From the 
fields of the almost silent Past there comes a whisper 
which is yet mightier than thunder, a word for all the 
lowly and great, the striving and despairing, but 
most of all to the impetuous, easily discouraged 
young, who need it most : Haste not, Host not ! 
Time, Faith, Energy, these conquer the world. This 
lesson do I learn from Marquette's lodge in the 
wilderness. Therefore is his life, as that of all truly 
noble souls, of perennial interest to mankind. 

Next year he will go to the Illinois. He has 
been studying their language from a young Indian 
of that tribe, and is already pretty well master of the 
tongue. But his hope is defeated, for a war breaks 
out between the Sioux and the people among whom 
he lives. With them he must voyage eastward, with 
his back upon the land of promise. But at length he 
is with his Hurons at Mackinaw, and his glance wan- 
ders over the lake to the west and southwest ; it jour- 



78 

neys wMtlier his feet would go, his moutli filled with 
glad tidings to the people of the Illinois and the 
river Mississippi. 

Long, as men count it, must he yet wait. Never- 
theless, humbly but fervently does he pray that, if it 
be Heaven's will, he may go whither his heart leads. 
At last, on the eve of the festival of the Immaculate 
Conception, tlie feast of all the year to him, a canoe 
from Canada comes up the glassy plain. Its occu- 
pant is the Lieutenant Joliet, an old fur-trader, and 
he brings important letters to Father Marquette. 

The minister of France has written to Talon, Inten- 
dant of Canada, to cause the South Sea to be disco- 
vered. This was the vision of the time, as the short 
route to China and the East is of ours. Then, they 
thought a river might bear them on its brimming 
flood to the South Sea ; now, we opine the iron road 
will take us thither. M. do Talon, the retiring gov- 
ernor, suggests to Frontenac, the newly appointed, 
that Joliet is the best man for the purpose, and tlie 
ecclesiastical authorities appoint Father Marquette. 
Here are the letters. The winter is spent at Mackhiaw 
in preparation.. "With crowds of Indians around them, 
the trader and the priest, kneeling on the ground, 
drew maps of such countries as the savages knew, 
lying toward the setting sun. After much study and 
prayer, with great hopes, yet lowly hearts, our friends 
set out for their long journey in the spring of 1673. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 79 

Across the lake to Green Bay ; tlien to the head of 
Fox River, where is an Indian village, in the centre 
of which stands a great cross planted by the zeal of 
Allouez, and crowned by the Indians with wampum 
and peltries of the choicest kind. The Indians, with 
hearts warmed toward the French, throng aronnd 
Marquette and Joliet with proffers of hospitality and 
kindness ; but when told the object of their expedition, 
their faces express great solicitude, and their mouths 
are filled with dismal tales of the dangers of the way. 
The land of the Great River and the vast stream 
itself are filled with frightful monsters and terrible 
men. Every effort was made to dissuade the good 
father and his party from their mad enterprise. But 
they were not to be moved. A party of Indians 
helped them across the portage to the Wisconsin 
River, where, launching their canoe, they were quit- 
ted by their guides, commended their way to God, 
and committed themselves to the stream of the sky- 
colored water. Floating upon its tranquil bosom 
seven days, they passed through a country of marvel- 
lous beauty and fertility. It w^as the month of June, 
and IN'ature had donned her gayest colors. Yines 
clambered among the trees. Sometimes from a bold 
bank the grassy plain stretched as far as the eye 
could reach, without a mound or grove to obstruct 
the view — ^the green land at last melting into the 
blue-rimmed horizon. Tlien the bottom land meeting 



80 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AJiTD PEOPLE 

them with verdant freshness at the river's edge was 
terminated ere long in a noble bluff, whose sides and 
summit were crowned with stately trunks and branch- 
ing foliage, casting lines of grateful shadow on the 
sward. The unHecked blue above them painted 
itself in the flood, seeming to create an azure vault 
beneath their birch pirogue. The breezy stillness 
was only broken by the river's lapse, the paddle's dip, 
or their own low murmurs of delight at the fairy-land 
scene around them. Thus for a week they floated, 
until, on June 17th, their placid stream swept them 
with its parting wave into the swifter current of the 
Great River, whose affluence makes glad a continent. 
Streams with broader openings to the sea there are, 
with grander historic associations, with more roman- 
tic memories thronging their banks ; but what one of 
all earth's watercourses can vie with this in its majes- 
tic appeal to the imagination and the hope of man- 
kind 2 Oh, James Marquette, can the rivers of thy 
goodly land of France, the Oise, by whose sedgy 
marge thy childish feet so often wandered, the Seine, 
traversing the great town of Paris, the Rhone, " the 
arrowy Rhone," the Rhine, burdened with its pur- 
ple hills clad in vines and crowned with castles — 
can any bear comparison with this? They flow 
through the dreamy lands of the Past ; its realms 
are the Future's. Like some great royal conqueror 
it leaps from its almost unnoted birth-place, Itasca 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 81 

Lake, rushes forward to exact the tribute brought 
from far provinces, east and west, and after its tri- 
umphal procession of two thousand five hundred 
miles, freely receiving, freelj giving in many a belt- 
ing zone, hurls broad and far its accumulated trea- 
sure, that thereby a world may be enriched. 

A great silent joy is in Marquette's heart, and as 
grateful tears wet his eyes, he offers a fervent thanks- 
giving that he has been permitted to look upon this 
wonder. The devout spirit thinks of the greatest birth 
of Time, and in commemoration of it he names the 
river "The Conception." This is the 17th June, 
1673. 

For eight days they glided over the crystal pave- 
ment between shores widening to the distance of a 
half league, and then approaching in rocky bluffs, as 
if they were the towers and battlements of hostile 
cities, to within a few hundred yards. In vernal pas- 
ture lands they beheld the moose and elk and deer 
cropping the herbage ; and lower down vast herds of 
buffalo grazed in the meadows, and the woods weru 
filled with flocks of wild turkeys. But for fifteen days 
they had not come in sight of trace or habitation of 
human beings. At length they discern a well- 
marked trail on the west bank of the river, and land 
to seek the men whose feet have left this trace. Si- 
lently, with minds moved alternately by hopes and 
fears, Marquette and Joliet proceed six miles, wher 

4* 



82 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

they descry three Indian villages. Uttering a loud 
cry, they rapidly approach them. A company of old 
men came forth to meet them, and when asked by 
Marquette who they are, replied, " we are Illinois." 
Great was the good father's joy. He explained who 
he and his companion were ; whereupon they were 
joyfully welcomed with the peace-pipe. Then fol- 
lowed a six days' feast. Heartily did the simple natives 
urge the Frenchmen to tarry with them. But their 
task was not half performed, and they must up and 
away. Taking an affectionate leave of their kind 
hosts, they were escorted to their canoe and pre- 
sented with a calumet magnificently adorned, than 
which no more valuable gift could have been made 
them. 

Passing the mouth of the Illinois, our voyagers 
sighted the Piasau bluff, where frightful monsters were 
traced high up on stupendous rocks, and the relics of a 
rude limning are still to be seen. Soon after there 
arose upon the air a roar as from a distant cataract. 
As they drew nearer they found it to be the rush of 
the Pekitanonie (the muddy river, as the Algonquins 
had named the Missouri), which rushed like some 
untamed monster upon the peaceful Mississippi, hurl- 
ing it with tremendous violence w^on the opposite 
shore. In the boiling muddy tide, seething and 
tumultuous, were borne great trees which it had 
uprooted in its wild career. Already had the Father 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 83 

heard of a western river wliich flowed downward to 
the sea, and by this one, he hoped some day to reach 
it. ]^ow his course was southward. Passing an 
eddy which the natives held to be a demon, they 
reached the Ohio, then called the Oubachi or river of 
the Shawnees. Still descending, they came to the 
warm lands of the cane, where the mosquitoes 
seemed to be holding a carnival. Wrapping them- 
selves in their sails as a protection against the pesti- 
ferous insects, they were after a time hailed from the 
shore by a party of wild wanderers, who were armed 
with guns and knives, obtained they said by trading 
with Christians to the eastward. Further on they 
were threatened by a hostile demonstration from a 
large party of natives, who advanced with menaces 
and brandished arms to meet them. It was a trying 
moment. But Marquette was equal to it. Invoking 
the protection of the Yirgin Mother, he calmly stood 
in the prow of his bark, holding aloft the calumet. 
It saved their lives. The warriors were pacified, 
received the strangers kindly, and entertained them 
with great courtesy. This was about the thirty- 
third parallel of latitude. Below this our little party 
only ventured ten leagues. They learned that the 
sea was ten days sail to the south ; and that there 
were many tribes near it, who traded with Europeans 
and who were at war among themselves. Satisfying 
themselves that the river emptied between Florida 



84 PIONEEES, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

and Tampico, and fearing to fall into the hands of the 
Spaniards, they determined to return. The main 
object of the enterprise was accomplished. Until 
this time it had been a vexed question whether the 
great river emptied into the sea near Virginia, into 
the Gulf of Mexico, or into that of California. Hav- 
ing discovered the river, learned the location of its 
mouth and above all else in the mind of the good 
Marqnette, preached the religion of the Cross to the 
heathen, opening the way for other missionaries, they 
reascended to the mouth of the Illinois, to the head 
of which they went, passing through the most delec- 
table land they had yet looked upon. Here 
they were met by the Kaskaskias, who hailed them 
with great joy, and conducted them in triumph 
across the portage to the Lake ; for Marquette pro- 
mised to return and preach to them. 

Four months from the time of setting out, they 
reached the mission of St. Francis Xavier ; and 
thus these seven men — five boatmen bore them 
company — ^performed one of the notable feats of 
history. The following spring Joliet embarked for 
Quebec, but as he was attempting to shoot a rapid 
in the St. Lawrence, not far from his destination, his 
canoe upset, causing the loss of his journal and maps 
and nearly of his life. We catch one more look at 
this worthy on the island of Anticosti, in the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence, which was granted him for his ser- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 85 

vices; and then tlie shadow Joliet joins his fellow 
shades and vanishes forever. 

Marquette, without thought of worldly fame or 
honors, or reward of any kind, studies only how he 
may recruit his health, which has been sadly shat- 
tered, and thereby be able to redeem his pledge to 
the Kaskaskias. This is his only earthly wish — to 
preach to his beloved Illinois. He shall not die 
until it be fulfilled. 

Spending the winter of 1674-5 near Chicago, in 
great feebleness, suffering from cold and want, but 
cheered by a peaceful, loving heart, he is able to 
reach his Indians in the spring, and solemnize among 
them the Easter ceremonies. But his old malady 
returns. jN'othing is left him now but to die. And 
with the mighty instinct of the human heart, long 
ing to breathe his last among his brethren, he bids 
farewell to his sorrowing neophytes, and takes his 
way to Mackinaw. His three faithful boatmen 
accompany him, tending him with all gentle care, 
lifting him in and out of the canoe, for the wasted 
man is too weak to walk. As they reach the outlet 
of a small stream in Michigan, Avhich now bears his 
name, he can go no further. A rude lodge is reared 
on the edge of the stream, with an altar before which 
the dying saint is laid. He calmly gives directions 
to his sobbing attendants concerning his burial. 
They take his crucifix from the breast, where it has 



86 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

lain through all these years of self renouncing toils, 
and hold it up before him. His face glows with a 
holy transport, as if it were an angel's ; one word, 
" Jesus," is on his lips, and then — he is dead. 

'Tis well. J^ine years of untiring labor for the sal- 
vation of the heathen, a life of perfect self-abnega- 
tion, a discovery rivalling in magnificence any ever 
made, are thus terminated by a lonely death on a 
desolate shore. Thus died Xavier, his elected model, 
after living as he had lived. Two years after, in 
1677, a flotilla of canoes from Mackinaw came to 
that dark wood at the mouth of the little river ; the 
Indians among whom he had long and faithfully 
labored exhumed his remains and bore them to Mac- 
kinaw. A fleet advancing from the shore met them, 
with tearful eyes, and amid the slow solemn strains 
of " De Profundis," chanted by priests and Indians, 
the remains were borne to the shore and finally depo- 
sited beneath the church, on whose site he had so 
often led their worship. 

For many a long year after, when the forest 
rangers abroad upon the stormy lake were endan- 
gered by sudden tempest or wild billows, their 
piteous cries were heard, and Marquette was the 
name they cried, asking his intercession, as of an all- 
powerful and undoubted saint. 

Important as his discovery was, it is certain that it 
would have been of slight advantage to France, but 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 87 

for the exertions of a young adventurer, whose story 
we h^ve next to trace. 

When Joliet was on his way to Quebec, after quit- 
ting Marquette, he stopped at Fort Frontenac, on 
Lake Ontario, where the town of Kingston now 
stands. The commandant of this post drank in with 
greedy ears the trader's recital of his voyage. He 
was one of the few that ever saw the Journal and 
map of Joliet. The trader went his way and the 
young soldier of fortune remained to dream in the 
wilderness and work his way to renown. 

Robert Cavelier de la Salle was born of an ancient 
and honorable family in Rouen. Renouncing his 
patrimony, or in some way deprived of it by unjust 
laws, he became a Jesuit, and received in a college 
of that order a thorough education. But finding the 
life of a priest incompatible with his tastes, he 
quitted the fraternity, receiving high testimonials of 
capacity and fidelity, and embarked as an adventurer 
for Canada, where he arrived between 1665 and 1670. 
Here the force of his character soon displayed itself 
by his successful prosecution of various difficult 
enterprises. In 1674 we find him commanding at 
the fort named in honor of Frontenac, governor of 
the province. The confidence of this functionary he 
seems to have completely gained. The next year he 
visited France with strong recommendations from 
the governor to the ministry. Colbert was then at 



88 PIONEEES, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

the head of the cabinet of Louis XIV. This great 
statesman listened attentively to the plans of the 
young soldier, and induced his royal master to grant 
his request. To La Salle was accordingly given a 
title of nobility, a monopoly in the fur-trade around 
Lake Ontario, the command and ownership of Fort 
Frontenac, and the lands in its neighborhood, on 
condition of his erecting a stone fortress, and estab- 
lishing a mission — for to overawe and convert the 
L'oquois, was the double object of the establishment. 
While engaged in this undertaking, he showed him- 
self an able politician, by his skillful management of 
the tribes around him. On the completion of his 
task, he found himself ruined. To while away the 
long winter evenings in his frontier post, and to ban- 
ish the demon of anxiety, he betook himself to the 
study of the Spanish accounts of America and its con- 
quest. His mind now reverted to the narrative 
of Joliet, little heeded at the time, and he seems to 
have been the first to identify the river which De 
Soto had discovered, with that explored by Mar- 
quette. To the Mississippi and its valley, the heart 
of our adventurer now turned in his extremity. 
There his failure might be retrieved, and fortune be 
secured. If he can obtain a monopoly of the fur- 
trade in that vast region, extend a line of posts from 
Canada to the Gulf, found a colony at the mouth of 
the great river, and ship his peltries thence to 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 89 

France, what easier ? Gigantic enterprise, yon will 
saj. But what can not one strong will do ? 

Hastening again to France in 1677, he readily 
obtained, through the friendship of the great Colbert, 
and of his son, the Duke de Seignelai, minister of the 
marine, the sanction and authority he needed from 
the crown. His patent confirmed the previous one, 
empowered him to construct forts wherever necessary 
in the western part of New France, and gave him a 
vast monopoly of the fur-trade, including, with some 
excejDtions, the whole Mississippi valley. Recruiting 
a company of mechanics and mariners, he starts a 
a third time for Canada, and September of the next 
year, 1678, found him once more at his seigniory of 
Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, with sixty men, 
prepared and resolved to carry out his great scheme 
of discovery, trade and settlement. He brought with 
him one Henry de Tonty as his lieutenant. This 
Tonty, said to have been the son of the inventor of 
those life insurance schemes called Tontines, was an 
Italian, who had been highly recommended to La 
Salle by a great noble of the French court ; and he 
thenceforth ever proved himself an unswerving ally, 
a faithful and able officer, and a trusty friend. He 
had been a soldier seven years in the French wars, 
and having lost a hand by a grenade in Sicily, had 
supplied its place with a rude claw of iron. 

With liis vast plans revolving in his mind, shaping 



90 PIONEEKS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

out tlie conception of that belt of forts and missions 
and settlements twelve hundred miles long, which 
was at once to secure the great continent for the 
Grand Monarch, to gird in and overawe the English 
and Spanish seaboards, to gather the Indians into 
the Catholic church, and to give himself imbounded 
riches and a mighty lordship — with all these magni- 
ficent dreams in his soul, La Salle nevertheless applied 
himself diligently to the details and drudgery of their 
small mercantile beginnings, sending forward traders 
to gather furs, and organizing matters at and about 
the Fort. 

His design was to build a vessel above Niagara, to 
sail in it as far on his way as the upper lakes would 
admit, and then to cross by land to the Mississippi, 
and proceed down the great river in another vessel. 
He therefore sent Tonty in a small craft of ten tons 
which had been built at Fort Frontenac the year 
before, with workmen, tools, materials, and provisions, 
to select a proper spot for building his brigantine, and 
also for erecting a fort. 

They arrived at the mouth of the Magara River in 
the beginning of January, 1679, and leaving their 
vessel and going round the falls, chose their dock- 
yard ; but finding the Indians dissatisfied with the 
plan of erecting a fort, they pacified them, not with- 
out dlfiiculty, and confined themselves to palisading 
the cabins in which they passed the winter. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 91 

La Salle embarked from Fort Frontenac, a short 
time after their departure, in another small vessel with 
merchandise, provisions, and rigging for the new ship, 
delaying, as he came, to conciliate the Senecas. He 
reached Niagara on the 20th of January ; and already 
there began to lower over him the dark clouds of that 
long series of misfortunes against which he bore up 
for so many years, with such heroic but unsuccessful 
strength and resolution. All at once he was assaulted 
with all the evils which afterward pursued him ; timi- 
dity or dislike or senseless obstinacy in his men, bitter 
and unscrupulous enmity from the traders with whom 
his monopoly interfered, and rapacious severity from 
his creditors. Tlie two pilots of his vessel quarrelled 
about the route, and wrecked her on the south shore 
of Lake Ontario. The anchors and the rigging were 
secured with great difficulty; but the goods and pro- 
visions were lost. The Indian traders too, with whom 
his monopoly interfered, and those connected with 
them in business, had begun to poison the minds of the 
Lidians, by representing that his forts and ships were 
intended, not for trade, but to subdue the tribes. 

But La Salle, with the able diplomacy of the 
French, conciliated the Senecas in his one short visit. 
Deferring his fort at ISliagara to please them, and 
urging on his main expedition to the West, he at once 
chose, from among the sites which had been explored 
for a dock-yard, a locality about six miles above the 



92 PIONEEES, PEEACHEE8 AND PEOPLE 

falls, on the English side, at the mouth of a creek, and 
himself drove the first bolt in the frame of his in- 
tended vessel, a week after his arrival. Then, leav- 
ing Tonty in charge of the ship-building, he hastened 
back again to Fort Frontenac by land, almost three 
hundred miles through snowy forests, with a bag 
of parched corn to eat, and with two men and a boy 
as guides and baggage-train. His errand now was to 
complete his arrangements for raising money, and for 
the management of his property during his absence. 
For nearly six months he was thus industriously at 
work in preparation, and struggling against the busy 
and unscrupulous intrigues of his enemies. His 
creditors too, in Montreal and Quebec, frightened at 
the stories which they heard of his wild schemes and 
monstrous expenses, seized and sold at ruinous sacri- 
fice whatever of his property they could lay hands on. 
But he could not stop to set these things right — 
that would have been precisely what his enemies 
designed ; so letting his peltries and merchandise go, 
and making a farewell grant out of his estate at Fort 
Frontenac to the Franciscans, of a hundred and eigh- 
teen acres of land — ^he had already erected for them 
dwellings and a chapel — he set off again for IN'iagara, 
hearing that his new ship was launched and ready. 
Coasting the southern shore of the lake in a canoe, he 
renewed his friendship with the Indians by the way. 
He found his vessel already launched, and towed up 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 93 

the river to within a mile or two of Lake Erie. She 
was named the Griffin, was of sixty tons burden, 
armed with two brass guns and three arquebuses, and 
adorned with a wooden griffin for a figure-head. 

After some delay the expedition, of thirty-four 
souls, including three Franciscan missionaries, em- 
barked on the 7th of August, 1679, amid shouts and 
salvoes of artillery, upon the untried waters of Lake 
Erie, westward bound. They steered boldly into the 
unknown depths of the lake, confident in their com- 
passes and in the skill of their pilot ; crossed the lake 
in less than three days ; threaded the shallows of the 
straits of Detroit and St. Clair, and the lake between 
them, to which they gave its present name in honor 
of the day ; then entered the broad expanse of Lake 
Huron. In crossing this, th^y encountered a tempest 
so terrible that they gave themselves up for lost, La 
Salle himself even crying out that they were undone, 
and offering fervent vows to the great St. Anthony 
of Padua, in case they should escape alive. Only 
the tough old sea-dog of a pilot would neither fear 
nor pray, but, Hennepin says, " did nothing all that 
while but curse and swear against M. de la Salle, 
who had brought him thither to make him perish in 
a nasty lake, and lose the glory he had acquired by 
his long and happy navigation on the ocean." They 
escaped, however, and arrived safe at Mackinaw. 

Here La Salle found that the influence of his ene« 



94: PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

mies, the traders, had gone before him. They had 
made the Indians believe that he intended both 
to restrict to himself all trade in skins, and also 
to subject them to the crown of France; and thej 
received him coldly and suspiciously, though with 
ceremonious politeness. They had also tampered 
with his advanced guard, most of whom had been 
indolent and unfaithful in their task of gathering furs 
and provisions. Still, the energetic leader was not to 
be diverted from his purpose. He left his faithful 
lieutenant, Tonty, to collect some of the deserters, and 
himself pushed on again in the Griffin for Green Bay. 
At the entrance of this arm of Lake Michigan, on a 
small island occupied by Pottawatomie Indians, lie 
found some of his missing fur-traders, with great 
store of peltries, the proceeds of their barter with the 
Indians. 

La Salle here takes a sudden and singular resolu- 
tion ; and one not pleasing to his men. But he is not 
wont to ask counsel at their hands, or indeed at the 
hands of any. Of few words, and of reserved and 
even harsh manners, he evolves his plans in silence 
and alone within his own soul, and sets himself to 
accomplish them with a will seemingly incapable of 
diversion or discouragement ; but he asks no man's 
advice, " talks things over " with no one ; only 
resolves, and then orders. Strange character for a 
Frenchman — and not only strange, but unfortunate, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 95 

at least so far as popularity was important to him. 
For a chief impediment to his plans, and the cause 
of his own untimely end, was the insubordination 
and enmity of his own men. In truth, there seems 
to have been not one faithful and thoroughgoing 
helper among them all, except Henry de Tonty the 
iron-handed Itahan, and one poor Indian of some 
distant eastern tribe, called Mka, a hunter of exqui- 
site skill, who followed his fortune hither and thither 
as closely and steadily as a dog, often the sole sup- 
port of La Salle himself and all his party for days 
and days together, and finally murdered with his mas- 
ter, for his faithfulness to him. Peace to the poor 
forgotten shade of that brave and faithful red man ! 

This strange resolution was, to send the Griffin, 
laden with the furs at Green Bay and what others 
could be gathered on the road, back again to 
Niagara, that her cargo might pay his debts. All 
the rest would much prefer the stanch and hitherto 
fortunate brigantine, for the remainder of the peril- 
ous navigation through Lake Michigan, to the frail 
slender canoes, exposed to furious tempests and 
thievish or hostile savages. But none thinks it best 
to remonstrate ; and with a prosperous westerly wind, 
the Griffin sets sail on the 18th of July, manned with 
five men and the swearing unterrified pilot, firing a 
farewell gun as she departs. 

She was never heard of more. Somewhere in the 



96 PIONEERS, PREACHEES AND PEOPLE 

depths of the north end of Lake Michigan, between 
Green Bay and Mackinaw, her decayed timbers, and 
the rusty relics of the " two brass guns and three 
arquebuses," her vaunted armament, yet repose. 
All else must long since have disappeared. Father 
Hennepin, with unclerical, careless disregard for the 
six unfortunate souls, her ship's company, dismisses 
the subject by saying, " This was a great loss for M. 
de la Salle and other adventurers, for that ship with 
its cargo cost above sixty thousand livres," — twelve 
thousand dollars. 

But La Salle, hopeful and cheery, as trusting in 
speedy freedom from debts behind, and speedy glory 
of great discoveries before, now pushes on southward 
in four canoes, burdened disproportionately with 
weighty property, even including a blacksmith's 
forge, and with a party now reduced by detachment 
and desertion, to fourteen. After a most toilsome 
and dangerous journey along the western side of the 
lake, sometimes entertained generously by friendly 
Indians, once embroiled with a roving squad of 
Outagamies or Foxes on a thieving expedition, on 
the first of ITovember they safely entered the 
Miami River, now called the St. Josephs, the 
appointed rendezvous for Tonty and for the Griffin. 

All that winter was spent in waiting for the 
expected comers. The men, weary of living by the 
uncertain fruits of the chase, dreading the winter 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 97 

and its famine, dreading the dangers of this vast 
unknown region into which they were to be led, 
murmured and complained, and desired to proceed 
into the Illinois country, where there was corn. But 
La Salle refused, gave them good reasons, and kept 
them busy in building Fort Miamis on a hill at the 
mouth of the river, while he sounded and staked out 
the channel, and sent two men to Mackinaw to 
hasten the coming of his ship. 

After long delay, Tonty appeared, gladdening the 
hearts of the party by the reinforcement and the 
two canoe-loads of venison he brought, but also 
bringing to his commander the heavy tidings that 
the Griffin had not been heard from. La Salle had 
already become apprehensive respecting her, since 
nearly twice the time had elapsed which should have 
brought her to the Miamis. And thus disappeared 
a large part of his means, and his hopes of promptly 
paying his debts. But the strong-hearted man 
wasted no useless grief over misfortunes now past. 
Delaying yet a little longer, until it became neces- 
sary to depart to escape from the winter, the expedi- 
tion left Fort Miamis on the 3d of December, in 
eight canoes, leaving instructions for the captain of 
the Griffin, in letters conspicuously fixed on branches 
of trees. Ascending the Miami about seventy miles, 
they make a portage across to the head of the Kan- 
kakee, follow that slow and crooked stream through a 



98 PIONEEES, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

hundred miles of desolate frozen marsli, then emerge 
into a prairie country, and after two hundred miles 
more of voyaging, enter the river Illinois. 

Thus they navigate southward, descending the two 
rivers, during the whole of December, supplying 
themselves with corn from the caches of a large 
Indian town whose inhabitants had departed to the 
hunt, leaving their cabins empty. Floating onward 
through Lake Peoria, they come suddenly, at its 
southern end, into the midst of a great camp of the 
Illinois tribe, occupying both sides of the river. But, 
putting on a bold face, and forming in order of battle, 
the brave commander of the little band meets the 
Indians as their superior in force, and only holds out 
the calumet of peace in answer to their signals ; satis- 
fies them for the abstraction of their supplies of corn, 
explains his designs, and concludes a solemn alliance. 

That same night came an emissary of his busy foes 
the private traders, a Mascouten chief named Monso, 
and poisoned the minds of all the Illinois — a fickle, 
cowardly, suspicious, thievish and lascivious race — 
w^ith the same old story that his plan was to exter- 
minate their nation, and that an army of the terrible 
Iroquois would soon be upon them. This he indus- 
triously told to one and another all night long, con- 
tirmed the tale by valuable presents of knives and 
hatchets and such coveted goods, and fled away 
before morning, that the unsuspecting Frenchman 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 99 

might be ruined without knowing whence came the 
blow. La Salle saw at once, when next day he went 
among his savage hosts, that their yesterday's jovial 
friendship was quite changed into suspicion and fears. 
But discovering the trick by means of an Illinois 
chief who had imbibed a strong liking for him, his 
frank and judicious explanations soon dispersed this 
threatening cloud, in appearance at least. Yet the 
minds of the Illinois were not entirely at rest, and an 
eminent chief, one Kikanape, took occasion, at a great 
feast which he gave the French, in along speech filled 
with flaming descriptions of terrible savages on the 
land, and vast monsters and hideous whirlpools in 
the great river, to dissuade them from going further. 
It may easily be supposed that the steadfast leader 
of the French was not moved by this savage rhetoric, 
whose plain meaning he saw clearly to be, " We do 
not want you travelling about our country at all ; so 
please go straight back by the way you came." He 
calmly rebuked the oratorical Indian for the veiled 
unfriendliness of his purpose, and the feast proceeded. 
Yet the infection worked among his men, as usual, 
and six of them, including two sawyers upon whom 
he depended to build the vessel in which to descend 
the Mississippi, ran away, like faint hearts as they 
were. It is even said that they basely planned 
a cruel death for their bold commander, and that he 
only escaped the effect of the poison they gave him, 



100 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

by a stroDg dose of treacle^ a sovereign antidote in 
that day, and which, as well as orvietan^ another 
ancient antidote, La Salle seems always to have had 
in his medicine chest. 

To prevent the rest from further dwelling npon 
future dangers, he explained to them the peril of 
leaving him in the winter, promised that those who 
desired it should be permitted and aided to depart in 
the sj^ring, showed them how unsafe was their unde- 
fended condition, and proposed to build another fort. 
To this they agreed, and he at once laid out the 
ground, and employed part of them in erecting a 
stout stockade, and the rest in building the vessel in 
which he proposed to descend the Great River. 
When the fort was completed, and it only remained 
to give it a n^^me, La Salle for once took counsel of 
his sorrows. He remembered the virulent pursuit of 
the revengelul traders ; the disappearance of the 
Griffin, with its rich freight of furs, and its richer 
freight of human souls ; the wasteful seizure of his 
goods by the creditors at Montreal and Quebec ; the 
long, weary journeys to and fro across stormy lakes 
and wintry forests; the base desertions, and vile, 
murderous schemes of coward followers ; and named 
his little stockade Crhvecceur^ "The Fort of the 
Broken Heart." 

But this first and last access of discouragement was 
soon repelled, and the clear, strong mind of the great 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 101 

discoverer regained its steady balance. Having 
completed tlie bark on the stocks so far as was pos- 
sible without the rigging and other materials in the 
Griffin, and having given np hopes of seeing her, he 
recognizes the fact that his means for proceeding are 
exhausted, and qnickly and quietly prepares for an- 
other winter's trip to Fort Frontenac, to refit, recruit, 
and return. He sends Father Hennepin, one of his 
Franciscans, with two stout French canoe-men, to 
explore the upper Mississippi during his own absence ; 
takes with him three Frenchmen and his faithful In- 
dian hunter, and departing, passes over the twelve 
hundred miles between Forts Crevecoeur and Fronte- 
nac, taking the route along the south shore of lakes 
Ontario and Erie, either near their coasts or upon the 
highlands dividing their afi[luents from those of the 
Ohio, deterred now no more than before, by the deep 
melting snow of the forests, or the floods and floating 
ice of so many rivers. Sending word back to Tonty 
to build another fort on the strong site afterward 
occupied by the French, Fort St. Louis, and even 
now called Rock Fort, on a bluff two hundred feet 
above the Illinois Eiver, he disappeared in the path- 
less woods ; and neither of his adventures nor of his 
solitary thoughts during the weeks of that long, toil- 
some way, have we any record. But experienced 
woodcraft, a hardy frame, and a strong will, brought 
him safely through. 



102 PIONEERS, PREACHEES AND PEOPLE 

Of course, misfortune and Lis enemies liave played 
into each other's hands and against him all the time 
of his absence. Besides the loss of the Griffin, he 
has been heavily swindled by his agents in trade on 
Ontario ; has lost a whole cargo of merchandise in the 
lower St. Lawrence ; several valuable canoe-loads in 
the rapids above Montreal ; a quantity more by other 
employees, who stole them and ran away to the Dutch 
at " Nouvelle Jorck ;" and still another large quan- 
tity by forced sales at the instance of creditors, who 
had heard (or wished they had) that he and all his 
party were drowned. 

Penniless, deeply in debt, all Canada full of his 
enemies, all his plans crushed, is he helpless, too, and 
will he succumb and disappear from Canada and from 
history ? IN^ever ! He has still one powerful and 
trusty friend — Count de Frontenac, the governor ; 
and one more, yet more powerful and more trusty — 
himself. "With the aid of these two he bestirs him 
with such energy and success, that he again secures 
men and means, and only varying his scheme by 
giving up the idea of navigating the Mississippi in a 
large boat or brigantine, and trusting to canoes in- 
stead, he departs again, July 23d, 1680. After a long 
journey, delayed by contrary winds on the lakes, he 
arrives, by way of Fort Miami s, at the chief village 
of the Illinois. It is burned and empty. In surprise, 
he proceeds to the site where he had directed Tonty 



OF THE ivnssrssippi. 103 

to build his second fort. There is not a vestige left 
of human labor or human presence. He turns about, 
without going further down the river, and returns to 
the Miamis, where he remains during that winter, 
occupied in negotiating peace among the Indians. 
In the course of this season he learns, from some 
wandering Illinois, a sad story of the disasters of 
their nation, but gains no news of Tontj or his 
men. 

But without them, his party is not large enough to 
proceed down the Great River. In the end of May, 
1681, therefore, he returns again toward Canada for 
further reinforcements, and at Mackinaw, to their 
mutual surprise and joy, finds Tonty and his men. 
Tliey exchange the stories of their separate experi- 
ence. Tonty related how mutiny had obliged him 
to give up both Fort St. Louis and Fort Crevecoeur, 
and had driven him to take shelter with the Illinois ; 
how an L'oquois army had invaded and scattered that 
tribe, and destroyed the villages ; and how, after long 
endeavors to avert the destructive purposes of the 
savage Iroquois, he and his few men had been forced 
to flee for their lives to Green Bay, some scouting 
Kickapoos murdering Father Gabriel de la Eibourde 
on the road. If he had taken the south road at Lake 
Dauphin, instead of that to the north, Tonty would 
have met his commander, on his last outward expe- 
dition, with a well furnished little fleet of canoes. 



104 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Then La Salle, with a steady countenance, as in- 
differently as if they had been the mishaps of 
another, in turn related a still longer and heavier ca- 
talogue of misfortunes and disappointments. Father 
Membre says, in admiration, that though any one 
but he would have renoimced the enterprise, he was 
" more resolute than ever to continue his work and 
complete his discovery." 

We must here advert for a moment to the liar 
Hennepin, who had, during La Salle's absence, made 
an exploring voyage on the upper Mississippi, and 
endured a short captivity among the Indians. From 
this he had escaped, and a few weeks after La Salle's 
meeting with Tonty at Mackinaw, he passed that 
post, made the best of his way to Canada, and thence 
to Europe, where he afterward published an account 
of a pretended voyage down the Great Eiver, in 
which he endeavored to rob La Salle of the glory of 
discovering: its outlet. 

]^othing could be done at Mackinaw for the great 
object of the persevering La Salle, so he and his 
party soon returned to Fort Frontenac. Here he 
rearranged all his finances, selected a strong body of 
Frenchmen and of 'New England Lodians, Abenakis 
or Mohegans, with these returned to Niagara, and in 
August, 1681, embarked thence once more for the 
mysterious mouth of the "Hidden Eiver," as the 
Spaniards named it ; at last, after undaunted and 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 105 

indescribable exertions, this third time destined to 
succeed. 

With fiftj-four souls in all, including ten Indian 
women to cook, and three children, the expedition 
passed from the Miamis to the Chicago Eiver, up 
this on the ice to the portage, down the Elinois to 
Lake Peoria, and thence by water, the river being 
open, toward the Mississippi. They swept past the 
Fort of the Broken Heart, barely delaying to look in 
upon the garrison now reestablished there, and press- 
ing forward with happier auguries, glided down a 
deserted river— the Indians being at their distant 
winter hunting-grounds— and on the 6th of February, 
1682, floated upon the long-desired stream, which 
La Salle now named the Colbert, after his staunch 
patron, the great French statesman. 

They swept downward, with various adventure; 
fishing or hunting ; holding peaceful intercourse with 
many a savage tribe ; erecting a splendid cross, bear- 
ing the arms of France, near the mouth of the Ar- 
kansas Eiver, in token of the proprietorship of the 
French king, and amid the ignorant rejoicing of the 
savages, who took the ceremony to be a show for 
their amusement, instead of a formal theft of their 
land, and after their departure carefully inclosed with 
palisades the ornamented cross. 

Onv/ard still; past the sun- worshipping Tensas 
whose ceremonies, large canoes, and profound reve- 



106 PIONEERS, 

rence for tlieir chiefs, seemed to indicate that they 
were of kin to the brave and interesting tribe of the 
ISTatchez. Onward still, past the Katchez themselves; 
past the Koroas and the Quinipissas, and sundry 
other tribes ; past a village jnst plundered, and ten- 
anted by the corpses of the slain ; and now, all at 
once, the vast stream divides before them into three 
mighty channels. The brave commander's heart 
beats high, for he nmst be near the southern sea ; 
and sending detachments down the eastern and mid- 
dle channels, under Tonty and Dautray, he himself 
pursues the western, the largest. The muddy waves 
of the broad flood are gradually found to become 
brackish, and then quite salt ; and now the measure- 
less expanse of the Gulf of Mexico lies wide before 
them. The mouth of the Great Eiver, the Hidden 
River, is found. 

Of the emotions of the stern and lofty-minded La 
Salle, as he thus floated out toward the goal of his 
vast and long-pursued enterprise, no record exists. 
"Whatever they were, his high and resolved features 
gave small trace of them ; and speedily returning 
to the prosaic duties of the mere discoverer, he spends 
one day in exploring and sounding the river's mouths 
and the neighboring shores, and another in finding a 
spot dry and firm enough, amidst those dreary ex- 
panses of fat alluvium, all overgrown with rank sedge 
and reeds, to afford a site for a memorial column and 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 107 

its attendant cross, tokens of the empire of Christ, 
and of the great French king. " Henceforth," saith 
La Salle, " my God and my king are supreme forever 
over the innumerable souls and the immeasurable 
lands of this great continent." 

Having selected a suitable place, on the 9th of 
April, 16S2, La Salle draws up his whole party un- 
der arms ; they sing the Te Deum^ the Exaudiat^ and 
the Doinine salvum fac Begem — thanking God, im- 
ploring his continued help for themselves, and then 
loyally asking it for their king, by the three sonorous 
old Latin chants. They fire a formal salute of ijius- 
ketry, and shout Vive le Boi ! Tlien the column is 
erected, and with a long enumeration of nations, and 
rivers, and lands, he formally proclaims that all the 
lands and waters of Louisiana, " along the Kiver Col- 
bert or Mississippi, and rivers which discharge them- 
selves therein, from its source beyond the country of 
the Elious or ]N"adouessions, and this with their con- 
sent, and with the consent of the Motantees, Illi- 
nois, Mesigameas, [N'atchez, and Koroas, as far as 
its mouth at the sea," are henceforth part of the 
realms of the king of France. And he demands of 
Jacques de la Metairie, the notary, his ofiicial certifi- 
cate of the transaction. The scribe draws up the in- 
strument, and it is signed by the notary himself, 
and by La Salle, Father Zenobius Membre, the 
missionary, Henry de Tonty, and the other French* 



108 PIONEEKSj 

men of the party, and delivered to the com- 
mander. 

Then they erect a cross , bury at the foot of the 
tree to which it is attached a leaden plate, with an 
inscription commemorating their discovery and their 
claim ; chant more Latin hymns , shont again Vive le 
Eoi ; and thus the Mississippi valley is made French 
for almost a centnry — until the peace of 1763. 

But they are hard pressed for food ; and barely de- 
laying to finish the ceremony, must push rapidly up 
the river. This they do ; and after a combat with 
the Quinipissas — the first into which La Salle had 
ever been driven with the Indians, so wise and skill- 
ful had been all his actions toward them — and after 
some suifering from hunger, the party proceeds safely 
on its return. At Fort Frudhomme, however, the in- 
trepid chief is stricken down by a wasting fever. He 
sends his faithful lieutenant, Tonty, with an account 
of his voyage and discovery, to Count de Frontenac, 
with orders to return at once ; and himself remains 
forty days on his sick-bed, under the care of the good 
priest Father Zenobius Membre, and was even then 
so worn down by illness that it was almost the end of 
September before he reached his establishment at 
the Miamis. 

La Salle now purposes to return down the Missis- 
sippi during the next spring, and to establish a strong 
colony near its mouth. He sends Father Zenobius to 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 109 

France with full accounts of his doings hitherto ; but 
for nearly a year he is occupied — probably, for he 
has left no record of his deeds — in trading, travelling, 
and keeping up his influence and connections with 
the Indians, the plan of the colony being postponed 
or modified by circumstances, or, more probably, by 
his own thoughts. 

For during the long months of that sojourn in the 
wilderness, the scheme of his Mississippi colony has 
grown and expanded within his mind. Twice has he 
proved his influence upon the rich and magnificent 
government of Louis the Fourteenth. "Why should 
he not a third time look to a mighty empire for the 
assistance he needs, rather than to his small indivi- 
dual resources ; and cross the ocean with a strong 
company in great ships, instead of boating obscurely 
dow^n the vast wilderness river in frail canoes ? 

He resolves to try ; and leaving the Chevalier de 
Tonty his financial agent and lieutenant command- 
ing, he departs down the St. Lawrence, takes ship at 
Quebec, and lands at Eochelle, December 13th, 1683. 

As usual, he find that his enemies have been ac- 
tive, and that fortune has aided them. His munifi- 
cent patron, Colbert, is dead. De la Barre, now go- 
vernor of Canada, has written to the home govern- 
ment^that La Salle stirs up Indian wars ; that all his 
tales of discoveries are lies ; that he has acted the 
part of a petty tyrant among those far-off wilder- 



110 PIONEEKS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

n esses, with a small band of vagabond followers, steal- 
ing and figliting. But it was not sncli an attack as 
this which could obstruct La Salle. Aided by his 
friends, Father Zenobius Membre, and Count Fronte- 
nac, now returned to France, by the inherited pre- 
possessions of Colbert's son, the Duke de Seignelai, 
now high in office, and by his own inexhaustible en- 
ergy and strange power over the court, he goes 
straight on with his plans. The absurd slanders of 
the spiteful De la Barre die in silence ; and the au- 
thority and means now confided to him were far 
greater than before. 

The king gives him a free gift of a ship of six guns, 
and the use of three more, a thirty-six gun frigate, a 
transport of three himdred tons, and a ketch; and 
fm^nishes supplies, sea and land forces, colonists : in 
short, the whole personal and material constituents 
of a colony. And not only has La Salle the supreme 
command of this great expedition, but territorial ju- 
risdiction over all the great valley whither he is 
bound, and over all colonies established therein. 

The reputation of the enterprise and its leader 
draw to him a number of volunteers, all respectable, 
and including several families, a brother of La Salle's, 
who was a priest, two of his nephews, and another 
relative, also a priest. 

And even now, at this very moment, when the im- 
pregnable, steady energies and inexhaustible wise 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Ill 

perseverance of this man seem at last to have brought 
him to a point promising the full reward of so many 
years of labor and incessant wanderings — even now 
opens the longest and saddest of all tlie long sad 
chapters of his fateful life. On the very point of em- 
barking, the careful chief, who had been forced to 
enlist his soldiers, mechanics, and laborers by means 
of others, found that these faithless hirelings had 
raked together the very scum of the sea-ports ; giv- 
ing him for soldiers beggars, vagabonds, and cripples 
so deformed that they could not handle a musket ; 
for skilled artisans, men perfectly ignorant of their 
pretended trades. In urgent haste, he partly reme- 
dies the evil, but, as usual, must let much of it pass ; 
trusting, not without reason, to the calm and ready 
strength w^hich has made head against so many trou- 
bles before. But another evil he cannot remedy. 
The generous king has appointed to the naval com- 
mand a l^orman, M. de Beaujeu ; and it would be 
ungracious, and is now too late to endeavor to dis- 
place him : a little-minded, obstinate, quarrelsome, 
pompous man, ridiculously vain of his rank of cap- 
tain, snappish and irritable, of all men on earth the 
very one to be vexed at the silent, self-reliant, haughty 
reserve of La Salle. Even before sailing, this un- 
happy captain writes peevish and dissatisfied letters to 
the marine department. How fatally and bitterly the 
fool vented his spite afterward, will quickly appear. 



112 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Let US hasten ; the narrative is painful ; who would 
protract the sorrowful story ? They had to return 
one hundred and fifty miles to replace a broken bow- 
sprit ; then sailing again. La Salle, with wise and 
cautious speed, refused to stop uselessly at Madeira, 
and the wretched ITorman, Beaujeu, and all the lazy 
ships' companies, murmured and were enraged. 
Then he positively forbade the sailors to subject his 
followers to the brutal abuses usual at crossing the 
tropic line, and they grumbled and complained still 
more. As the fleet approached St. Domingo, a storm 
scattered it ; and eagerly seizing the opportunity of 
making trouble, the mean Beaujeu, instead of enter- 
ing Port de Paix, the rendezvous agreed upon, and 
where were the royal officers whom La Salle was to 
meet and who were ordered to aid and promote his 
designs, passed round the island and landed at Petit 
Goave, far to the southwest. And now, also, the in- 
scrutable purposes of God add to fierce tempests and 
hatefully perverse unfriends aboard, two other ene- 
mies. Tlie Spaniards, now at war with Prance, sur- 
prise and seize his ketch, the St. Francis, with thirty 
tons of merchandise and military stores — a grievous 
loss, which would not have happened had Beaujeu 
put in at Port de Paix, as he should have done. But 
La Salle calmly adds the item to that long list of 
shipwrecks in Canada, and dismisses it from his 
mind. A wasting disease, however, is the second and 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 113 

worst of these added foes ; and under the furious 
assault of a tropical fever, his life even is despaired 
of. But he is not yet to die ; we may even suppose 
that that powerful will urges him through this peril 
of disease : that he will not die — unless God so de- 
cree. And in three weeks, though yet feeble, he 
consults with the governor and intendant, who came 
to Petit Goave to meet him ; takes on board provi- 
sions and domestic animals ; obtains sailing direc- 
tions, and hastens away ; for his miserable band of 
vagabond soldiers, living in licentious disorder, are 
diseased and dying, or desert the jangling and 
ill-omened fleet for the luxurious ease of St. Do- 
mingo. 

Embarking in the slowest sailer, and taking the 
lead in her, he sets sail again ; coasts the southern 
shore of Cuba ; stops three days at the Isle of Pines ; 
weathers Cape Corientes, and then Cape San Anto- 
nio, and after being once driven back, steers north 
west into the great Gulf of Mexico, straight for the 
mouth of the Mississippi. They sail eight days, and 
now the soundings tell of land not far off. In two 
days more they discern it. "Where are they? Con- 
sulting and hesitating, they conclude that they are 
in the great Bay of Appalache ; for the pilots at 
St. Domingo told them of strong currents, which 
they accordingly believe have carried them east- 
ward. Fatal error ! They were, doubtless, already 



114: PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

far west of that strangely-hidden river, in one of the 
bays of the coast of Texas. 

But thus they judge ; and coasting further west to 
find the Mississippi, they leave it yet further behind 
them. Sailing a whole week, they still imagine 
themselves in the Bay of Appalache. Sailing two 
weeks more, they become convinced of their error ; 
the coast trends southward ; they are approaching 
Mexico. They turn about, and it is proposed to find 
the Mississippi by coasting eastward again. But 
Beaujeu flatly refuses, without a supply of provisions, 
which La Salle will not give, lest the wicked captain 
should sail away to France. 

Returning, however, a little way up the coast, 
they enter Matagorda Bay, which La Salle names 
the Bay of St. Louis, and which he vainly hopes to 
find one of the mouths of the Mississippi. It is de- 
cided to disembark, and all the emigrants go ashore, 
leaving the crews only on board the ships. The 
neighborhood is ex]3lored, the harbor sounded, and 
the Aimable, the transport, ordered in. Her captain, 
a brute or a villain, or more probably both, refuses 
a pilot, and running his vessel ashore, slie bilges ; 
some one takes pains to destroy her boat ; and the 
greater part of her cargo — the very sustenance of the 
colony — is lost. The Lidians take some goods whicli 
float ashore; and a party of Frenchmen, sent to 
reclaim them, seizing some canoes and skins in repri- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 115 

salj the enraged savages make a night attack upon 
them, kill two and womid two more. 

The demoniac cunning and ferocity of the red men 
thus cooperates with these devouring shipwrecks. 
And the colonists already begin to lament, to mur- 
mur, and to talk of returning to France. But their 
leader, though cruelly grieved, is not discouraged nor 
moved ; his fearless resolution is a tower of strength 
to all the band, and the enterprise proceeds. 

Beaujeu departs, still angry and venomous, carry- 
ing away all the cannon balls for the eight great guns 
of the colony, because, forsooth, he would have had 
to move part of his cargo to get at them ; leaving on 
that wild and distant shore about two hundred souls, 
the small vessel, La Belle, and that portion of provi- 
sions and goods saved from the Spaniards and the 
sea. 

This is in the middle of March, 1685. The com- 
mander orders a temporary fort to be constructed, and 
then explores the coast. Finding a pleasant site 
some distance west, he moves his colony thither, and 
in the course of July they are all there, their only 
misfortunes by the way, one death from the bite of a 
rattlesnake, and a conspiracy among the soldiers to 
murder their officers and run away, this last detected 
in time to crush it. On this new site are erected, 
with terrific labor, even fatal to some of the colonists, 
dwellings and a fort, named Fort St. Louis ; and La 



116 PI0NEEE8, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

Salle, having thus provided for the security of his 
colony, prepares to make a journey by land for the 
hidden fateful river. In October, having been de- 
layed by his brother's sickness, he sets out, the Belle 
accompanying him part of the way by sea. On the 
first night six men, detached to take soundings, keep- 
mg careless watch, are murdered by the savages. 
The commander marches on eastward, discovers the 
Colorado, examines the eastern part of Matagorda 
Bay, and returns, after an absence of more than four 
months, with but eight of the twenty men who set 
out with him. Six are dead ; one, a quarrelsome, 
vindictive villain, named Duhaut, deserted, and has 
returned alone some time before ; and the others are 
searching for the Belle, of which no news has been 
received. They came in next day ; nothing could be 
seen of her ; she was doubtless lost, and with her dis- 
appeared their last means of communicating with 
civilized men, unless by journeys scarcely less than 
sure to be fatal. 

But such communication must be had. The neces- 
sity of it being recognized, the strong and calm com- 
mander quietly and quickly prej)ares for it, as coolly 
as if he were only intending to stej) across the fort ; 
gathering resolution — if, indeed, that indomitable 
will ever looked for encourao-ement at all — from the 
evident alternative of swift destruction. His journey 
shall be to the Illinois, where, in his strong hill fort, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 117 

the valiant and faithful Tonty is sure to be at his 
post, waiting orders as directed — unless orders which 
cannot be disobeyed have summoned him away from 
all earthly obligations. Once in Illinois, he can ob- 
tain assistance there, and can send or go to Quebec 
or to France. Taking twenty men again, he sets out 
by land, in the end of April, 1686, leaving M. Joutel, 
as before, in command of the fort. 

He returns in August, having travelled far up into 
the interior, and having there been delayed for two 
months and more by a violent fever. Their ammu- 
nition becoming exhausted, during this time, and 
being entirely dependent on hunting for provisions, 
they had no alternative but to turn back. Of this 
second company of twenty, but eight returned ; four 
had deserted to the Indians, one was lost, one de- 
voured by an alligator, and the rest, being unable to 
endure the fatigue of the journey, had set out to 
return and were never heard of. 

These failures cast a deep gloom over the little 
company in the fort, now reduced, by death and 
desertion, from about two hundred to forty; but. 
Bays Joutel in his journal, ^' the even temper of our 
chief made all men easy, and he found, by his great 
vivacity of spirit, expedients which revived the low- 
est ebb of hope." He had given up the Belle for 
lost, and therefore rejoiced exceedingly to find that 
his kinsman, M. Chefdeville, and some others of her 



118 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

crew, had escaped, and had saved his own clothes 
and part of his papers, although the little vessel her- 
self, as he had concluded, had j)erished. 

La Salle at once set about building a storehouse, 
to keep his men employed ; and still retaining his in- 
tention of proceeding to the Illinois, they talked 
daily about the journey. Being taken ill, however, 
his stout-hearted lieutenant, Joutel, offered to go 
instead, if he might take fifteen men and the faithful 
Indian hunter, who had followed his chief to France 
and back to Mexico. But the commander recovers 
his health, and again — as he would have done a 
hundredth time, had he failed ninety-nine — makes 
his arrangements and sets out, taking with him a 
third twenty men, and leaving thirteen men and 
seven women in the fort, wdth a considerable stock 
of provisions and arms. 

Thus, on the 12th of January, 1687, departs Eobert 
de la Salle, for the third time, from his little colony, 
as resolute and cool as ever ; but the parting was 
saddened as if by presentiments of evil. " We took 
our leaves," says the veteran man of war, Joutel, 
" with so much tenderness and sorrow, as if we had 
all presaged that we should never see each other 
more." 

And now the long, brave struggle with fate and 
with enemies, draws to its melancholy close. The 
little party, with their JiYe horse-loads of provisions, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 119 

disappears from the eyes of tlie Sieur Barbier, left 
commander of the scanty colony in the fort ; and 
plunging into the woods, marches northeastward, 
across the pleasant prairies and through the open 
woods of Texas. They ford rivers and pass through 
swamps, often easing their progress by following 
buffalo paths ; negotiate, as they go, with the In- 
dians, always friendly, but always on their guard; 
and Nika, the hunter, ever purveys for them abun- 
dance of game. 

On the 15th of March, La Salle sends Duhaut, 
the mutinous wretch before mentioned, Hiens, a 
German buccaneer, Liotot the surgeon, ]S'ika the 
Indian, and his own footman, Saget, to bring in 
some provisions which he had concealed a few miles 
away, on his last journey. These they found spoiled 
by wet, and as they returned, Nika killed two buf- 
falo, and they sent the footman on to advise their 
commander to have the meat dried, and send horses 
for it. He does so, sending his nephew, Moranget, 
a violent and reckless young man, with several 
more of the party. 

Moranget comes, and finds that Duhaut and the 
rest are smoking the buffalo meat, and that, by the 
common right of hunters, they have laid by some 
marrow-bones and choice bits for themselves. In a 
sudden burst of unreasonable and inexplicable pas- 
sion, he reproves and threatens them, and seizes not 



120 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

only all the smoked meat, but all the tidbits which 
the J had saved according to custom. This last 
offence filled up the cup of their anger, even to run- 
ning over ; for these three, the surgeon Liotot, Hiens, 
and Duhaut, fancied they had — and most probably 
had — other causes of complaint against the unhapj)y 
young man. With black looks, their hearts all boil- 
ing with hot wrath, but still withheld for the moment 
by lack of concert from wreaking the revenge for 
which they all thirst, they silently draw off, and con- 
sult apart upon the matter. Seared and hardened by 
crime, the inhuman wretches easily agree upon their 
measures. They will murder Moranget in his sleep, 
and so square their account with him. Eut, one of 
them suggests, the Indian and the footman are faith- 
ful — they will avenge the deed, or inform upon us. 
The answer is easy — they, too, will be asleep ; we 
have only to kill them too. Accordingly, taking 
into their plot Teissier and Larcheveque, two more 
of the party, they wait, revelling in the devilish satis- 
faction of anticipated revenge, until their unsuspecting 
victims have eaten, and are peacefully asleep, dream- 
ing, doubtless, of distant homes and loving hearts 
in sunny France. Liotot, the surgeon, arises, takes 
an axe, and strikes Moranget many blows on the 
head ; then leaving him, dispatches the Indian and 
the footman, who never stirred. But such was the 
vitality of the young officer, that, though mangled 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 121 

and speechlesSj lie sat up, alive, a horrible spectacle 
of misery. The murderers oblige his fellow, De Marie, 
though not a conspirator, to put him out of his pain. 

Crimes are seldom single. It needs not long reflec- 
tion to show them that they must do yet another mur- 
der, or suffer for those already done. They must kill 
La Salle too. And they will the more readily do 
this, because they have some harshness of his to 
punish. They would at once have set out to attack 
him, had not the river between them risen too high. 
But he comes to them, as if impelled upon his fate. 
Uneasy at the delay of his nephew, and, as if under 
some presage of misfortune, or consciousness of fault 
in his own or his nephew's conduct, he asks his men 
if Liotot, Hiens, and Duhaut have not expressed some 
discontent. 'No one seems to know of it, and, his 
apprehensions increasing, he sets out on the third 
day to find his nephew. 

Approaching the tragic scene, he sees some eagles, 
and thinking carrion near, he fires a shot, as a signal 
to his friends, in case they have killed game and are 
within hearing. Silent in death, they are beyond all 
human summons. The doomed commander's signal 
serves only to insure and hasten his own fate. The 
conspirators hear it ; Duhaut and Larcheveque cross 
the river ; Duhaut hides in the reeds, and Larche- 
veque shows himself at a little distance. La Salle 
calls out to him, asking after Moranget. The man 

6 



122 PIONEEES, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

answers, vaguely, rudely, and omitting the usual ges- 
ture of respect, that lie is along the river. The 
punctilious and severe chief advances, as if to reprove 
or chastise the impertinent manner of his follower ; 
Duhaut takes fatal aim from his lair, and fires. His 
ball passes through the head of La Salle, and he falls 
without speaking a word. 

Father Anastasius Douay, who was with his leader, 
prepares to share his fate, but on their telling him 
that he is safe, endeavors to do the last priestly offices 
for him. But the dying man can only feebly press 
the hand of the good father, in token that he under- 
stands him, and his spirit quickly passes. The death 
shot brings up the other conspirators ; and they strip 
and insult the poor corpse. The surgeon, Liotot, 
laughs and mocks at it, and, in the excess of his bru- 
tal glee, cries out over and over again, " There thou 
liest, grand bashaw — there thou liest!" And they 
fling the naked body aside among the bushes, a prey 
to wild beasts ; though they do not prevent the sor- 
rowing priest from burying it afterward, and erecting 
a rude cross over it. 

Thus died Kobert Cavelier de la Salle, at a time 
when a fairer prospect than ever of some permanent 
success was opening before him. His faithful fol- 
lower, Joutel, who was one of the party, but not pre- 
sent at his death, thus delivers his funeral oration, 
with terse military frankness, mingled of praise and 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 123 

blame : " Ilis constancy and courage, and his extra- 
ordinary knowledge in arts and sciences, wliich ren- 
dered liim fit for anything, together with an indefati- 
gable body, which made him surmount all difB.cul- 
ties, would have procured a glorious issue to his un- 
dertaking, had not all those excellent qualities been 
counterbalanced by too haughty a behavior, which 
sometimes made him insupportable, and by a seve- 
rity toward those under his command, wdiich at last 
drew on him implacable hatred, and was the occasion 
of his death." 

Few words may close this sad story. A swift re- 
tribution overtook Liotot and Duhaut, who were a 
little after slain in a quarrel, by Hiens, who remained 
among the Indians. Six of the party, all the conspi- 
rators having left them, reached, in July, a post esta- 
blished by Tonty at the mouth of the Arkansas, and 
proceeding onward, reached Fort St. Louis, thence 
went to Quebec, and thence to France ; hiding, with 
difficulty and equivocation, their heavy burden of 
sad news, until they first revealed it to the French 
king. 

La Salle's little colony vanished away. The In- 
dians assaulted and took it, slaj'ing all but four 
youths and a young girl, who were afterward rescued 
by a Spanish force from Mexico, sent to observe the 
French establishment. 

Tonty had descended the Mississippi while LaBalJo 



124 PIONEERS, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

was in Texas, but not finding him, left a letter for 
him with the Indians, who delivered it safe to Iber- 
ville, fourteen years after, when he entered the river. 
Then returning, he resumed the duties of his lieuten- 
ancy in Illinois ; and spent the remainder of his life, 
as far as is known, in military services in various 
parts of North America: a stout and faithful soldier 
to the last. 

ISTot one written word from La Salle's pen has 
reached us. His papers perished in the lonely fort 
on Matagorda Bay. 'Nov liave we even reports of his 
statements as to his views or motives ; for it was not 
his custom to speak of what he intended, but only to 
order what he desired, and thus it happens that our 
estimate of him must be based upon our scanty infor- 
mation of his actual achievements, preserved either 
by ill-informed or unappreciative friends, or unscru- 
pulous and cunning enemies. 

We need not elaborate a description of his charac- 
ter ; our story has sufficiently exhibited it. The les- 
sons of his life are easily read. It is true, that that 
haughty silence, that harsh, peremptory manner, were 
faults ; but how manifold the excuses — ^liow terribly 
complete the expiation ! Tenderly we would touch 
upon those errors, and would rather enlarge upon the 
unspotted honor, the far-seeing plans, the wise prac- 
tical sense, the tact and skill in governing and nego- 
tiating, and organizing, the stainless, impregnable 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 125 

courage, and, aboTc all, that calm, colossal power of 
will wliicli impelled liim so resistlessly through and 
over the opposition of so many foes, so many misfor- 
tunes, with an inscrutable, gigantic momentum, like 
that by which the vast icebergs of the Arctic ride 
crashing through the thick fields of ironbound ice, 
with a force beyond human admeasurement, but 
calmly and steadily, as if floating in a summer sea. 
ITo grander model of superiority to the vicissitudes of 
human life is to be found in history. 

Farewell, strong and brave man ! From thee may 
we well learn a lesson of courage, of perseverance, 
of patient endurance and undying hope ; and if the 
perplexing question should arise within us. How 
can it be just that such heroic struggles should at last 
so utterly fail — why could not this noble life at last 
be crowned with peace and honor and happiness ? let 
Faith answer, from behind the mysterious veil of 
death — ^Ye shall know all, when ye come hither ! 



Lecture III. 

THE 

FRENCH IN ILLINOIS. 



12J 



THE FRENCH IN ILLmOIS. 

THE IDYL OF AMERICA. 

* In the history of the exploration and settlement of 
the great valley of the Mississippi, as far as we have 
hitherto examined it, the four predominant influences 
may be named as Eomance, Religion, Ambition, and 
Greed, each conjoined with the others in varying pro- 
portions. 

The early history of 'New England is a manifesta- 
tion of a stalwart courage that dared to face cold, 
hunger, peril, nakedness, and barbarism, solely for 
the maintenance of a faith dearer than life itself. 
But this unrelaxing sinewy exertion, this undaunted 
courage, this determined and irreversible resolve to 
live out the principles of religious belief, in things 
political and social as well as in things ecclesiastical 
— all these powerful and noble and lofty characteris- 
tics are combined with and colored by a certain de- 
gree of severity. The Puritan social life was rugged 
to hardness — stern, uninviting. None of its features 
were refined, delicate, genial. Sentiment was un- 
known to the majority, and ruled out for all. Tho 

g* 129 



130 



temporal exigencies of the place and tlie time were 
too terrible and too pressing — the requisitions of the 
current Calvinism were too serious — too gloomy 
— to encourage or even to permit the expansion and 
development and cultivation of the more beautiful 
social faculties. 

Nor did the origin, the process and the progress of 
the settlement of other parts of the continent, afford 
more space for the growth or exercise of these facul- 
ties. Further south, on the Atlantic coast, we see 
the workings of the European mercantile system, as 
modified by the colonial monopolies of the respective 
governments who sent or protected the settlers. ISTew 
York was a depot and agency for the traffic of the 
Dutch "West India Company. The spirit of the early 
lords of Yirginia is well illustrated by the brutal ex- 
hortation of that nobleman who replied to the colo- 
nial representations of the wants of their souls, and 
their need of mental and spiritual improvement, by 
saying, " Damn your ' souls ;' make tobacco !" Caro- 
lina was an endeavor to realize the fantastic political 
dream of the philosopher Locke. In Florida and 
Louisiana, the predominating influences were the 
prominent traits of the rulers and people of the parent 
nations, reproduced with bad fidelity in the Ameri 
can settlements which sprang up under their colonial 
monopolies : greed of gold, lust of landed property, 
pride of conquest, fanatical zeal. The transatlantic 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 131 

plantations were primarily to serve as distant gar- 
dens to tlie royal palaces of Europe, and secondarily, 
to spread tlie dominion of the Koman Catholic faitli. 

But we are, at this point, brought to the consider- 
ation of one beautiful exception to the remainder of 
all the broad continent, l^ot to a perfect Paradise — 
not to a true and ideal Eden ; but yet to such a 
peaceful sunny spot, such a benign and kindly social 
life, such a scene of universal heartfelt instinctive 
courtesy, of patriarchal subordination, of mild and 
blessed neigliborly virtue and forbearance, of harm- 
less, simple, sufficing pleasure, of perfect health, 
blooming, happy youth, unambitious, industrious 
manhood, quiet old age, as is nowhere else to be 
found throughout all tlie broad page of American 
history. 

The conduct of the French toward the aborigines 
of this continent was far more humane and generous, 
wise and successful, than the policy of any other 
European nation. The Spaniards treated the Indians 
like slaves and beasts of burden, and with a cold- 
blooded, selfish, blind brutality, which, by extermi- 
nating the unhappy race, exhausted its own materials 
and disappointed its own objects. The Anglo-Saxon, 
a man of higher grade, but not less self-contained, 
self-satisfied, exclusive, and resolute than the Span- 
iard, did not prove himself brutally bigoted and ava- 
ricious like him, in his intercourse with the red 



132 PIONEEIiS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

men, but only unconciliating, severe, exacting, and 
strangely inconsiderate of the defects and misfortunes 
of savage nature and savage education. Planting 
himself in the Avilderness with all his institutions, his 
common law and statutory code, wdth the Mosaic in- 
tensifications which obscurity and distance allowed, 
he did what was fair, just, lawful and right, by his 
laws and according to his principles. And if the In- 
dians transgressed these, instead of inquiring under 
what code, or upon what violation of savage prin- 
ciples it was done, he stolidly inflicted a statutory 
English penalty ; and if this roused retaliation, the 
united colony, with the same stolid ignorance, re- 
torted by judicial and military devastations and mur- 
ders that might, it is true, temporarily quell opposi- 
tion by the death of their enemies or the intimidation 
of the survivors, but which always left alive the 
smoldering embers which kept up the constant and 
fiendish border warfare, and ever and anon blazed 
out into one of the frightful and perilous Indian 
wars. 

The French were no whit less zealous for their re- 
ligion than the Spaniards ; beyond all comparison 
more so, as missionaries, than the English, l^or were 
they less eager than either for gain, for adventure, 
or for empire. But the genial social qualities, the 
inborn national adaptability and courtesy, even the 
less stringent sense of moral obligation, their greater 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 133 

habitude to feudal law, and their patient sub- 
jection to seignorial rights, which may be called 
faults or defects, gave them incalculable advantages 
in founding, maintaining, and cementing the public 
and individual intercourse which they so long main- 
tained with the Indians. In truth, had it depended 
alone on the success of alliances and cooperation with 
Indian tribes, instead of the fortunes of civilized war 
and the exigencies of European politics, it is well- 
nigh certain that the vast French belt of fortresses 
and settlements which so perilously girded in the 
Atlantic seaboard, would have fulfilled its purpose ; 
that the English settlers would have been driven 
into the sea, exterminated, or reduced under the 
French power ; and that the lilies of France, instead 
of the lion of England, would have waved over the 
whole vast domain of central !N"orth America during 
the latter half of the eighteenth century. 

There is no more striking exemplification of the 
advantages in point of personal character thus as- 
cribed to the French, than the history of those set- 
tlements founded in Illinois by the successors of 
La Salle, during the period from about 1680 until the 
removal of so many of the French at the transfer of 
authority to British hands in 1Y65. 

The way to the prairie land, it will be remembered, 
was pioneered by the saintly Marquette. "Next came 
tlie indefatigable and far-seeing La Salle, and his 



13 J: PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

faithful and no less indefatigable lieutenant, Henry 
de Tonty. These able leaders and skillful negotiators, 
and many more of like character and less renown, 
diffused among all the numerous tribes from the St. 
Lawrence to the upper waters of the distant Missouri, 
where the stout sieur Juchereau maintained his 
lonely trading-post, a spirit of friendly regard for the 
French, and of deep reverence for the great French 
king. And in the footsteps of trappers and traders 
there followed Jesuit missionaries of zeal as fervent 
and character as beautiful as the holy Marquette him- 
self: Allouez, his predecessor on Lake Superior, his 
successor on the alluvial lands that border the rivers 
of Illinois, and good Father Gravier, who founded 
the oldest permanent settlement in the great Missis- 
sippi Yalley, the Yillage of the Immaculate Concep- 
tion of Our Lady, afterward named Kaskaskia. The 
time of the foundation of this ancient town is not 
positively ascertained ; but such data as have been 
determined seem to justify the belief that Philadel- 
phia, Detroit, Mobile, and Kaskaskia, were all founded 
in about the same year. Then came Father Pinet 
and Father Marest, preaching in like manner to the 
unsophisticated but most discouragingly vicious deni- 
zens of the woods, the doctrines of Jesus and of the 
Pesurrection. These holy fathers built them little 
unpretending chapels of bark, and their humble 
sanctuaries were crowded with such numbers of 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 135 

natives that many were obliged to stand witliout the 
threshold. 

Then, enticed by the stories that reached them, un- 
der the inclement sky and the strict feudal system of 
Lower Canada, of the good livers of this distant land, 
the mildness of its climate, the richness of its soil, 
the fruitfulness of its pastures and its groves, one 
straggler after another descended from those rigorous 
regions, navigating the vast circuit of the great lakes, 
and passing by Lake Michigan, across the portage from 
the Miamis to the Kankakee, or from the Chicago to 
the Illinois, and erected a humble home within that 
great expanse of low-lying, fertile soil now called the 
American Bottom. This region, beginning on the 
eastern bank of the Mississippi River, nearly opposite 
to where its mild and placid stream is joined by the 
turbid waters of the Missouri, extending from this 
point sixty miles southward, and in width, from the 
river's bank to the bluff beyond, frOm five to eight 
miles — formed a tract of such fertility as is scarcely 
elsewhere to be found on earth. Here, surrounded 
by the exuberant products of nature, the French 
raised their half-wigwams, half-cabins, by driving 
corner posts into the ground, and then transverse 
laths — for they scarce deserved the name of beams 
— ^from one to another of these posts; plastering 
over these with the hand, a coating of "cat-and- 
clay," as the American settlers called it : soft clay 



136 PIONEERS, PKEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

worked up with prairie grass and Spanish moss. With 
this stucco upon the outside and the inside of the 
latticed walls, and neatly whitewashed, with roofs 
thatched with long grass carefully woven and matted 
together, and lasting, it is said, longer than shingles — 
with spacious piazzas all around the house — there 
presently arose picturesque villages, bordering a sin- 
gle street, so narrow that the settler might sit, smok- 
ing his pipe, beneath the shade of his piazza, and talk 
to his neighbor across the street in his ordinary tone 
of voice. 

But let us orderly describe this simple and happy 
community in its prime — perhaps about the year 
1750 — their laws, their religion, their social organiza- 
tion, their manners, their occupations, their charac- 
ters. For the whole texture and character — ^the gross 
and the detail — are so utterly and diametrically op- 
posed to the ideas and conceptions of the descendants 
of English settlers, that the amplest delineation which 
the occasion admits may well fail to communicate a 
full comprehension of them. 

The laws of the French settlements in Illinois were 
based upon the same great Eoman code which under- 
lay the jurisprudence of all the south of Europe. But 
some considerations, either of expediency or libe- 
rality, caused the substitution of allodial titles to land 
for the feudal tenures of Canada ; that is, the settlers 
were permitted to own land very much as a New 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 137 

England farmer owns it, instead of being obliged to 
hold it at the pleasure of the feudal lord, in whom 
was vested the real ownership. Thus the villagers of 
Kaskaskia, and the other neighboring settlements of 
our " terrestrial paradise," as La Salle aptly termed 
these regions, possessed, at the time to which we refer, 
each his parcel of land, granted bj government to all 
the village in common ; one great tract for tillage, 
and one for pasture, separated b j a fence, and stretch- 
ing back from the river bank to the limestone bluff. 
In this each family had a portion set apart for itself, 
and sacred from all intrusion. The village authori- 
ties, the senate of the settlement, enacted regulations 
requii'ing every family to commence planting, culti- 
vating and harvesting on certain fixed days. The 
consent of this same body, as representing the whole 
settlement, was required for the admission of any new 
settler to a share in the common field. 

Of statute and common law, courts and attorneys, 
fees and pleadings, these fortunate people knew no- 
thing. Quarrels were as rare among them as in an af- 
fectionate family. N"o courts of law were established 
there until after the country passedinto the possession 
of the British ; and after they were established, no ac- 
tions were brought before them until after the Anglo- 
Americans possessed the land. The sour, pugnacious 
litigations, as well as that much vaunted but very 
doubtful institution, the trial by jury, of the English, 



138 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

were an evil and a remedy equally foreign and terri- 
ble to tlie kindly disposition of the Frencli. K any 
differences arose wliicli the parties could not settle, 
they were referred to the arbitration of the priest, or, 
in the last resort, to that of the commandant at Fort 
Chartres, a mighty potentate, ruling, in name at least, 
territories vaster than most kingdoms, representing 
all the power and wisdom of the French king, and 
looked up to by the simple settlers as the perfection 
of all human strength and judgment. 

The religion of this far-off prairie settlement was 
Catholic. A reverend Jesuit father, head of the col- 
lege established in Kaskaskia, and superior of all the 
missions in the valley, and the curate of the village, 
who received a small salary from the government, 
eked out by marriage and burial fees, and the gifts 
of his parishioners, were the highest ecclesiastical 
dignitaries in Illinois. Pomp and pride they had 
none ; devoted, poor and humble, it was the purity 
and goodness of their lives which gave them 
their powerful influence among their little flock. 
The people were sincerely religious after their kind ; 
and with the characteristic laxity of practice so ab- 
horred by tlie stricter followers of Calvin, after the 
services of the Sabbath were over, they devoted to 
quiet amusements and pleasures the remainder of the 
holy day. 

They were ignorant of letters, and happy in their 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 139 

ignorance. The Jesuits established a few little 
schools, where were taught the elements of reading 
and writing ; and this was learning enough for the 
Frenchman of Illinois. The great world and its 
weighty affairs troubled him not. He supposed that 
the Pope managed all spiritual concerns, and Louis 
of France all temporal concerns. With their wisdom 
and power at the helm, represented by those two reve- 
rend and awful dignitaries, the curate and monsieur 
le commandant^ he, the French settler in Illinois, was 
perfectly certain that all would go well ; he let the 
world wag on, and made himself happy with the tri- 
vial enjoyments brought by each peaceful day. He 
could read enough, and write enough, to draw, under- 
stand, and sign the simple instruments, which were 
all he needed, and to spell out the stories of the 
saints, or a tale of the crusaders ; and more he needed 
not. 

Each family held from one to three acres of land 
in the central part of the village. This was the pro- 
perty of the first settler of the name. Here the pa- 
triarch built his lowly cabin ; and as son or daughter 
married, another mud-walled and grass-roofed cabin 
arose near his own, and within the same inclosure. 
With each new marriage appeared a new home. 
Tliese peaceful, easy lives, the pure, sweet air, the 
healthful out-door manners, and plain nutritious fo- 
rest food, prolonged life to a remarkable degree ; and 



140 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

thus around the house of the patriarch there gathered 
a dozen or a score, nay, forty or fifty dwellings of 
children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, 
even to the fourth and fifth generations. 

These communities were, perhaps, chiefly agricul- 
tural. Each family carefully tilled its separate 
allowance of the common field, and that wealthy soil 
repaid their neat though homely husbandry with 
plenteous and more than sufficient crops. Six hun- 
dred barrels of flour were shipped to ITew Orleans 
from the Wabash country alone, in 1Y46, besides 
hides, furs, tallow, wax, and honey. 

But the first settlers had been the daring coureurs 
de hois, the runners of the woods, who had found 
their wild pleasures and their j)erilous profits in van- 
quishing the hardships and dangers of the pathless 
forest, the roaring rapid, the toilsome portage ; in the 
skillful but laborious occupation of the hunt ; and in 
trading with the fickle, treacherous and savage In- 
dians of those remote regions, from the Abenakis of 
!N'ew England and the Outaouacs, or Ottawas, of the 
St. Lawrence and Lake Huron, to the distant Sioux, 
or, as they were then termed, !N"adouessions. And 
however quietly and easily the sons and grandsons of 
these roving men lived in the shaded cabin or the 
narrow, sunny street of Kaskaskia, or among the lux- 
uriant fields without ; however gaily their hours might 
pass amid the light labors of the day and the jovial 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 141 

dances of tlie evening ; there was scarce a young man 
in whom the wild longing for the forest and rivers 
did not at some time wake np. Then, in his frail ca- 
noe, he passed far np into the region of lakes at the 
head of the Mississippi, or the rugged, desolate plains 
upon the upper waters of the Missouri ; traversing 
the distant Sioux country, or even the rugged ranges 
of the Rocky Mountains. Hunting and trading, he 
returned with a canoe-load of furs ; floated afar off 
down to that great capital, ISTew Orleans, or round by 
the bayous and creeks of the coast, to the distant city 
of Mobile ; exchanged his wild commodities for what- 
ever civilized merchandise seemed good unto him, 
and returned up the rapid river to his quiet prairie 
home, perhaps to refit and depart upon another ex- 
pedition to the Indian country ; perhaps to trado 
away the goods from below for produce, and return 
again to barter at the southern cities ; or perhaps to 
bury a bag of French livres and louis-d'ors, or Span- 
ish doubloons or dollars, beneath the floor of his 
home, and resume his labors in the fields. 

Whether the young wanderer returned richer or 
poorer in purse, he brought home one certain and 
lasting treasure — a great store of wild tales of inci- 
dents by flood and field, his own strange and varied 
experiences, and many more, told him by the trap- 
pers of the mountains, the canoe-men of the river, 
and the various men he met in the cities of the south.. 



142 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

The return of these travellers, after their long voy- 
age of twelve or twenty months, was — like every fes- 
tive occasion — celebrated by a ball ; for here, as eve- 
rywhere, dancing was a peculiar and prominent 
amusement of the light-hearted, social and active 
French. "Word passed through all the settlement, of 
the return of the wanderers, and at once the place of 
entertainment was fitted up, and the arrangements 
made. Young and old, grandfather and grandchild, 
negro slave and fair maiden, all came to join in 
the festive scene. The entertainment was regu- 
lated with the same quaint municipal orderliness that 
controlled the operations of tillage and pasturage. 
Provosts were appointed, male and female ; usually 
some well-respected grandsire and grandam had 
charge of the ceremonial, saw that every lady was 
danced with and that every gentleman had his part- 
ner, that the negro slaves enjoyed their rightful equal 
share of liberty within the room, that even the little 
children had opportunity to frisk through their share 
of the dance among the rest ; and thus all passed in- 
nocently and gaily. At a given hour the company 
separated, and, joyous and satisfied, all went home. 
The ball-room was often graced by the reverend pre- 
sence of the priest of the village — for his simple pa- 
rishioners had no social amusements which he could 
not approve and witness — and in these rustic gaieties 
there was a degree of propriety and dignity — I might 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 143 

almost say of decency — wliicli it would be hard to 
matcli, I fancy, in the ball-room of our own more in- 
telligently Christian and more elaborately civilized 
society. 

Other balls they had, with somewhat more of cere- 
monious observance. On !N'ew Year's Eve, the young 
men of the village patrolled the town in the costume 
of beggars, and entering the cottages in which dwelt 
the fairest maidens, petitioned for bread. Being well 
feasted and entertained, they then extended an invi- 
tation to each hospitable damsel for the dance to-mor- 
row evening. This was the inauguration of the festi- 
val of the coming year. About the 8th of that 
month, great cakes were baked, and in these were 
carefully deposited four beans. The cakes were cut, 
and the gentlemen to whose share fell the pieces with 
beans in them, were called kings. These four bean- 
kings selected four queens, and the queens then se- 
lected the kings of the next ball that was to be given. 
At its close, the lady queens of the occasion selected 
four other gentlemen, whom they elected to the honor 
of this shadowy kingship, inaugurating them with all 
due solemnity, by the granting of a kiss. These gen- 
tlemen inaugurated other ladies by the same interest- 
ing process, and they became the regulators and go- 
vernors of the following ball. And this, the " King- 
Ball," as it has been called, has been kept up, and 
still is, through all these years ; and if you ever travel 



144: PIONEERS, PREACHEES AND PEOPLE 

in the State of Indiana, and stop at the ancient town 
of Yincennes, and there have a friend or acquaint- 
ance who can introduce you to the French society of 
the place, you may, on a given evening of almost any 
week in the calendar year, have an opportunity of 
attending the king ball ; for it has never been allowed 
to pass out of fashion from the early settlement of 
Illinois down to the present writing. 

These people, with their kind and simple habits, 
easily fraternized with the Indians, and although 
there was great difference between them and those 
original owners of the soil, by reason of physical, 
mental, and moral condition, their differences seemed 
to relate and ally them more intimately to each other 
than white and red men were ever allied on this con- 
tinent before. To the honor of both parties let it be 
said, there was scarce ever a fraud, a quarrel, or a 
murder between the French and Indians upon the 
soil of Illinois ; and it constitutes, in this particular, 
the one only grand exception, saving the enterprise 
of Friend William Penn in the establishment of his 
City of Brotherly Love. And there, even, as soon as 
the good Penn himself had passed away, and the 
equally good, if not better, James Logan, who after 
him came into the dignity of Secretary of the Colony 
of Pennsylvania — so soon as their official sway and 
authoritative influence was gone, the Quakers were 
found to the full as overbearing, unjust, avaricious, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 145 

careless, and regardless of the good of the natives, 
as the Puritan Fathers of ISTew England. But these 
Frenchmen of Illinois, singularly enough it seems to 
the student of American history, in all their inter- 
course with the Indians treated them like human 
beings and equals in every respect, and received the 
kind and faithful treatment which was the natural 
result, in turn. The friendly and trustful reciprocity 
of benefits, the intimate neighborly communion, be- 
tween these forest Frenchmen and forest Indians, 
constitutes one of the few beautiful pages in the 
record of American colonization, usually so dry and 
barren, or so blood-stained and full of miseries. 

And thus, in that pleasant untroubled far-off land, 
and except for their happy family relation and the 
wise separate ownership of their lands, holding their 
property in common, sheltered almost like children 
under the mild influence of the good priests to 
whom, as to a father, they told all their sweet confi- 
dences of love, or their little sorrows and troubles, 
resting in sunshine, and far from wars and disturb 
ance, beneath the broad banner with the lilies that 
streamed from the battlements of the old fort : thus 
was enacted this brief poem of the ages, this Idyl of 
America. This atmosphere of rural freshness, of de- 
lightful confidence, of unrestrained liberty, free fi-om 
the sordid, troubled, eager haste of trade, the harden- 
ing touch of avarice, the gnawing tooth of care — 
1 



146 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

passed so far backward toward tliat lovely dream, 
tlie Golden Age, that in truth and reality it began to 
reproduce the lengthening of days, always a feature 
in the limning of that ancient legend. These people, 
it seemed, would have come to live forever, if forever 
were a possible term on earth. 

And why should they grow old ? It is care that 
wears us all out. We struggle beneath burdens in- 
expressible. Anxiety, with terrific plough, scars 
dreadful furrows over brow and cheek ; worn out and 
weary, the springs of life exhausted, and desire even 
all but dead, we tremble on the verge of the grave 
at the age of fifty or sixty. Yet the French in Illi- 
nois retained good spirits, physical elasticity, and 
exceeding animation, to the age of ninety, one hun- 
dred, one hundred and ten, and one hundred and 
twenty ; and such cases you may find even now in 
Attakapas, Opelousas, or Bayou Lafourche, the 
French Creole regions of Louisiana. 

Thus went their lives kindly and cheerily by, 
though with no impulse, little enterprise, no inspira- 
tions ; and though it was perhaps but a droning 
life — no contribution to the accumulated treasures of 
the ages, no exem^^lification of a stern struggle for 
principle, nor of a mighty aspiration and efi'ort for 
the ideals of the race — jet it was such a sunny, peace- 
ful life, so quietly, brightly joyous with the genial 
play of benign feelings, of the kindly social faculties 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 147 

of our nature, as gladdens us to look upon. We 
must long, sometimes, to escape out of the mighty 
rusliing current of our civilized life, and to rest 
awhile upon some green island like this, where God's 
heaven hath not a cloud, where storm and tempest 
are unknown, where the still waters around us have 
not a ripple on their surface. 

Thus were they living, missionaries, fur-traders, 
vojageurs, farmers, simply and innocently, in honest 
labor and harmless enjoyments, in the year 1719 
or 1720. A sort of border war was then carried 
on between the French in Louisiana under their 
great leader, Bienville, and the Spanish viceroyalty 
of ]\Iexico. Offended at the rapid daring with which 
the French were pushing their explorations and 
planting their outposts west of the Mississippi, and 
toward the great Santa Fe trail, which had even 
then been opened by traders, they secretly organ- 
ized a great expedition at Santa Fe, for the pur- 
pose of exterminating such of the French settlements 
on the upper Mississippi as they could reach, and 
substituting Spanish colonies instead ; to which end 
were sent priests, artificers and women, property 
and domestic animals, all the materials for a new 
establishment. Their plan of operations was to join 
forces with the Osage Indians, and in concert with 
them, first to exterminate their enemies the Mis- 
souries, the allies of the French, and then to quench 



14:8 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

the light of the flourishing settlements in a storm 
of blood and fire, and plant instead the standard 
of Spain. 

After a long desert march of nine hundred miles 
across the plains which have of late years become 
so familiar to us, they reached that recent battle- 
ground of politics, the upland prairie country of 
Kansas, the supposed abode of their expected allies, 
the Osages. By a strange fortune, they fell in 
with their intended victims, the Missouries, instead, 
who spoke the same language with the Osages ; and 
confident of their men, at once revealed to them 
the plan for the total destruction of their tribe. 
The imperturbable savages received the startling 
news with no sign of surprise, signified their appro- 
bation of the scheme, requested two days to assemble 
their warriors, and took their measures in savage 
secrecy. They drew from the Spaniards full details 
of the plan, and in character of the Osages received 
the ample supplies of ammunition and more than a 
hundred guns, destined for their own slaughter. 

And now the next morning was to witness the 
setting forth of the joint expedition. But to the 
treacherous and self-deluded Spaniards that morning 
never came. In the night the Missouries rose up and 
smote their invaders and slew them, until but one 
living soul was left — a Jesuit priest, whom they sent 
back to Santa Fe with the doleful tidings. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 149 

Though thus providentially preserved, this nine 
hundred miles' march awakened the apprehensions of 
the French for their distant settlements in Illinois 
and on the upper Mississippi ; and they promptly 
erected Fort Orleans, on an island in the Missouri 
ahove the mouth of the Osage Kiver ; and for the 
immediate defence of the Illinois settlements, that 
dignified and famous stronghold already mentioned, 
Fort Chartres. This fortress was completed during 
the year 1720. It was placed about a mile and a 
half from the Mississippi River, within the great 
American Bottom which we have already described, 
near the five chief villages of the Illinois country — 
Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Prairie de Kocher, St. Philip, 
and St. Genevieve, which last alone was west of 
the Great Eiver. To these was soon added the vil- 
lage of Fort Chartres, which grew up under the 
walls of the fort. 

This redoubted fortress, long the strongest garrison 
on the !N'orth American continent, occupied an irre- 
gular square of about three hundred and fifty feet to 
the side. Its walls were of solid masonry, three feet 
thick and fifteen feet high. Its ramparts were de- 
fended by twenty great guns; and such was its 
strength and armament, that it was impregnable to 
any force then available against it. Here, for forty 
years, was the centre of the French power in Illinois, 
the key of all the land, an important link of the great 



160 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

chain of fortresses between Quebec and New Orleans; 
the residence of the French commandant ; the metro- 
polis of the gaiety and fashion of all the country 
round : as an old Illinois chronicler, with pardonable 
local entlmsiasm, calls it, " the Paris of America.'' 
But, alas for the brief duration of human prosperity ! 
In 17G5, the last French commandant of the Illinois, 
M. St. Ange de Bellerive, formally gave up the fort 
and his authority into the hands of the British captain, 
Sterling. And all this time, the capricious, mighty 
flood of the Mississippi was silently marching across 
from the westward, arraying against its strong walls 
powers not to be opposed by great guns nor by regi- 
ments of armed men. Steadily the eating flood 
swept nearer and nearer, and presently — in 1772 — 
two bastions were undermined. The English disman- 
tled and deserted the old fort. Fifty years ago, part 
of its site had been swept away by the devouring 
river, and it was a venerable ruin, solitary and over- 
grown with w^ild vines and with trees, some a foot in 
diameter. 

The Spanish invasion had long passed by ; and under 
the kindly despotic patriarchate of the commandant in 
Fort Chartres, and of the little village senates of old 
men, in the beauteous prairie land — where the land 
lies rolling like the billows of the sea, heaved in gen- 
tle undulations beneath the summer sun, studded 
with groves like islands far out on the deep, carpeted 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 151 

with flowers that lend their rich fragrance to the air 
until for sweetness you seem to be walking in Para- 
dise, where all that is around gladdens the senses and 
rejoices the heart — the French colonists lie down and 
rise up without fear or guile, thinking no evil against 
any, and themselyes without apprehension of incur- 
sion of savage, attack from hostile army, or any rob- 
bery or theft or fraud. Here life is serene as if man 
were never driven out of Eden, and the flaming che- 
rubim stationed at the gate with his terrific sword. 

But far away beyond the mountains is gathering 
the storm of war, which is to transfer all this vast val- 
ley from French to English hands, and to substitute 
for the bright, peaceful happiness which I have striven 
to depict, the rough and passionate cupidity of the 
Anglo-American backwoodsman — the violent sway of 
arms. The English settlers, eager after the magnifi- 
cent lands beyond the Alleghanies, are slowly steal- 
ing over the ridge ; and military detachments, and 
families, and single hunters, push westward into the 
great valley. Tlie French have long been steadfastly 
advancing the design conceived by La Salle almost a 
hundred years before ; and from Quebec to JSTew Or- 
leans the vast gh'dle of fortresses and confederate na- 
tions, at once held together and made accessible by 
the wondrous highway of the Great Lakes and the 
Great Eiver, is almost complete, keyed by the great 
metropolitan stronghold of Fort Chartres, and lack* 



152 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ino; but one or two more fortresses between that and 
;New Orleans. 

That mighty and terrible confederation, the Six 
ITations, has long resisted the furious attacks of 
Onondio, the great French captain, and governor of 
Canada ; has kept the yallej of the Ohio unknown 
and inaccessible to their missionaries, their traders, 
and their settlers ; and has, for the most part, nega- 
tively or positively, been ranged on the side of the 
English. Some of their young men, on distant scout- 
ing parties, have seen large bodies of French troops 
moving up the rapids of the St. LawTcnce. They 
bring the news home ; and in the great confederate 
senate-house at Onondaga a council of the Six liga- 
tions is held, to consider the important information. 
It is resolved to send the tidings to the Governors of 
Massachusetts, E'ew York, and Yirginia, and it is 
done. But these great men are little inclined to be- 
stir themselves ; they are busied in squabbling with 
the provincial assemblies, or they are at ease, and 
would fain be left " in their lazy dignities " — all but 
Governor Dinwiddle, of Yirginia, an able, shrewd, 
stirring Scotchman, wdio sees at once the importance 
of the juncture. The troops now pushing up the St. 
Lawrence, are destined to occupy and hold for the 
French king the valley of the Ohio — for notwith- 
standing the Mississippi had been explored a hundred 
years before, and routes had long been open between 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 153 

Quebec and New Orleans, by way of the Illinois and 
"Wabash, it was not until about 1740 that the Ohio, 
above the Wabash, had been even explored by the 
French. The present scheme is to move by way of 
I^iagara across to the headwaters of the Alleghany, 
to occupy thence downward all the valley of the 
Ohio, and in course of time to secure the whole land 
close west of the AUeghanies, and confine the grow- 
ing English settlements to the narrow belt between 
the AUeghanies and the sea. 

The Six Nations send the French commander a 
message of entreaty, remonstrance, and threats. But 
these are treated with contempt, and the standard of 
France moves forward. Governor Dinwiddle sends 
a messenger to ask the French what is their design in 
thus entering the valley of the Ohio — of the Beauti- 
ful River, as the French boatmen call it. " For," 
say the English, " all the land is ours, from the stormy 
Atlantic across to the peaceful sea on the west ; be- 
cause" — admirable logic ! — "our countrymen first 
settled the eastern shore. We deny the claim of the 
French to the Mississippi valley, founded on the de- 
scent of its chief water-course, the river," by " one 
-La Salle," as Washington called him. 

Yet the title by which the English held the Atlan- 
tic slope was no better, if even as good, as that of the 
French to the great inland valley. The only Eng- 
lishman who had entered that valley before 1740 was 



154 

Captain Barre, the agent of Dr. Daniel Coxe, proprie- 
tor of New Jersey, wlio entered the Mississippi Eiver 
from its month in a corvette of twelve gnns. Stem- 
ming the deep and mnddy current, all at once the 
English captain is hailed from a small boat that meets 
him in one of the reaches of the river. A lad of 
twenty-one, in command of the skiff — it is Bienville, 
then and long after the Governor of Louisiana for the 
French king — stands up and addresses Captain Barr^. 
The truth is, that his army is with him in that little 
boat, and he has scarce a better weapon than his 
naked hand, for he is on an exploring expedition, not 
a conquering one. Yet he hails as sternly as if the 
commander of regiments and embattled forts. " Turn 
about," he orders, " and go down the river ! I am 
loth to harm you, but if you go beyond the next 
bend, I have guns enough in position there to blow 
you out of the water, and I will do it !" The daunted 
Englishman, believing every w^ord, obeys, and es- 
capes with his sloop-of-war, as fast as he can, from 
the boy and his boat's crew ; and to this day the point 
in the river where he retreated is called the English 
Turn. This was the only entrance of the English 
into the Mississippi Yalley until Dr. "Walker's first 
exploring expedition over the Cumberland Mountains, 
about 1748. 

"What right had either nation to these lands ? Said 
an old Delaware to an English partisan, " The king 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 155 

of France claims all the lands one side of tlie Oliio, 
and tlie king of England all on the other side. J^ow, 
VjlieTe are the Indian'' s lands .^" And the confounded 
backwoodsman was speechless. The red men owned 
the lands. ]S'either Onondio nor Corlear — neither 
Englishman nor Frenchman, had the shadow of any 
claim to a foot of land in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi. 

But of all this the shrewd Scotch governor of Yir- 
ginia neither thinks nor cares. He rests satisfied 
upon the usual claim by discovery, and is the more 
certain of the justice of his country's pretensions 
because his own estates in forest lands depend thereon. 
So be inquires by the m-outh of his messenger, one 
Major Washington of the Virginia provincial forces, 
what does the king of France mean, and what do his 
servants of Canada mean, by thus presuming to in- 
trude upon undoubted English territory in the Ohio 
valley? The young major of course receives a curt 
though courteous reply, and carries it back to those 
who sent him. 

Not, however, to let the affair rest ; for their glow- 
ing zeal for the pretensions of his Britannic majesty 
is intensified and made practical by their own. For 
the Ohio Company of Yirginia has received a gift — 
no matter though the king who gave it did not own 
it — of six hundred thousand acres of the best land 
west of the mountains ; and in this company, two 



156 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

elder brothers of our youthful provincial major, and 
Governor Dinwiddle, are principal shareholders. If 
the French hold the Ohio valley, these present broad 
domains on earth, and still fairer future castles in tlie 
air, will alike disappear, and great prospective gains 
will be lost. This, I hasten to add, is said without 
meaning to impute any sinister motives to George 
Washington. He sincerely believed in the English 
claim, and in his own and his friends' property ; and 
he would have been more than human if these pecu- 
niary interests had not reinforced the alacrity which 
he would, no doubt, have shown in the cause if he 
had never owned a foot of Ohio land, nor expected to. 
He returns, at any rate, in 1754, now promoted to 
the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and in command of a 
small body of troops, to arrest the progress of the 
French, who have commenced actual hostilities by 
taking from the English (in April, 1754) a small 
stockade fort in the forks of the Alleghany and Mo- 
nongahela Elvers, and by beginning a stronger and 
more serviceable fortress in its place, which they call 
Fort Duquesne, in honor of the governor-general of 
Canada. Washington crosses Laurel E,idge, and 
gains the Great Meadows, a pleasant open spot some 
fifty miles southeast of the new French stronghold. 
Here he learns from an old friend and companion in 
forest journeys, one Christopher Gist, settled near by, 
and from the half-king of the Delawares, Tanachari- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 157 

son, that a party of French are in his neighborhood, 
with warlike intentions. His Indian allies search 
them ont, and about sunrise he discovers them en- 
camped in a retired and secret place among the 
rocks. Discerning the tall form of the Yirginian 
advancing from among the trees, and the troops 
behind him, they spring to arms, and at once 
commence a vigorous fire upon the English. But 
being surrounded and outnumbered, ten of them, 
including their commander, M. de Jumonville, are 
killed, and the remainder made prisoners. 

That brief command, " Fire !" echoed all over the 
earth. That scattering blaze of musketry among an 
obscure pile of wild rocks beneath the western Alle- 
ghanies, kindled a conflagration that spread through- 
out the continent of Europe, as fire runs through the 
dry prairie-grass in autumn time ; and burned even 
on the far shores of Asia. It was the beginning of 
the Seven Years' "War, a struggle which called forth 
the genius of Pitt as a minister and parliamentarian, 
and of Frederic the Great as a warrior ; which crushed 
the doctrine of legitimacy in France ; and which, 
under the over-ruling of Him who sees the end from 
the beginning, not as man ordereth, but who maketh 
the wrath of man to praise Him, did more to elevate 
the masses of the population of Europe, and to pre- 
pare the way for the freedom and independence of 
our own country, than all other causes together. 



It^S PIONEEKS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Tlie war thus fairly commenced, Jumonville's 
brother, De Yilliers, commandant at Fort Chartres, 
hastens eastward to revenge his brother's death, and 
finds Lieutenant-Colonel Washington still in the 
neighborhood, opening a military road for troops ex- 
pected from Yirginia. The Frenchman came upon 
him with double his forces, but declining the battle 
which the bold young commander offered in the open 
ground before the fort which he had constructed, he 
laid siege to the small and ill-provisioned stockade, 
which, with a judgment giving little promise of his 
after wisdom, Washington had planted in low ground, 
where it was commanded and almost thoroughly 
raked from the secure covert of the wooded ridges on 
either side. An attack was soon commenced, and 
after nine hours of sharp firing, during which thirty 
of the garrison were killed and three wounded, the 
French commander, afraid that his ammunition would 
fail, allowed "Washington to capitulate and retire east 
of the mountains with all the honors of war; the 
articles of capitulation, which were in French, by 
means of the ignorance or treachery of the inter- 
preter, admitting the death of Jumonville to be an 
" assassination," and promising that no further estab- 
lishments should be attempted west of the mountains 
for the term of one year. This obligation was not 
taken to be binding. 

Then comes the expedition of General Edward 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 169 

Braddock, whose hot-headed valor, absurd routinism, 
and arrogant conceit, we all know ; as well as the in- 
conceivable obstinate folly with which he persisted 
in trying to dress ranks, and form by platoons, there 
among the forests, " as if manoeuvring his troops upon 
the plains of Flanders ;" and the genuine English 
pride and stubbornness with which he refused to take 
advice from the provincials, experienced in bush- 
ranging and Indian fighting; and how the hard- 
headed fool thus threw away his own life, and the lives 
of three hundred better men, great treasures wasted 
to no purpose, with the certain prospect of taking 
Fort Duquesne ; for nothing was further from the 
minds of the French and Indians than a victory, and 
they were on the point of evacuating the fort. 

And now, in good season, the Great Commoner, 
William Pitt, takes the helm of English affairs. 
" "What are we to do ?" cries Chesterfield ; " abroad 
reverses and disgrace ; at home, poverty and bank- 
ruptcy — what are we to do ?" In America, the 
French line of midland forts was steadily and rapidly 
closing in behind the belt of English settlements 
along the sea. In India, the other side of the world, 
Dupleix had laid at Pondicherry the foundations of a 
power which promised quicky to exterminate the timid 
traders of the East India Company, and to bring the 
oriental wealth and the swarming millions of Hindos- 
tan beneath the power of France. In the Mediterra- 



160 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

iiean, Minorca was taken by the French forces under 
the Duke de Eichelieii. On the continent of Europe, 
the single ally of England, of any power, Frederic of 
Prussia, was attacked at once by the three vast em- 
pires of Austria, France, and Russia, and that in a 
quarrel where he was flagrantly in the wrong ; and 
the English king's own hereditary dominions of Ha- 
nover were overrun by French troops. The tremen- 
dous energy, the i)ride, the rapid decision and daring 
of the great minister, inspired fleets, armies, the whole 
nation. From being sullen, gloomy, discouraged, 
fearful, they became, in a year or two, daring, high- 
spirited, fearless, and enterprising, almost beyond the 
bounds of human belief or human capacity. Under 
his strong, haughty, and energetic direction, the stout 
Prussian king is brought safely through his terrific 
war ; Hanover is cleared of the French ; the coalition 
between Russia, Austria, and France is shattered ; 
the victories of Olive and Lawrence eradicate the 
very foundations of the French empire in Hindostan, 
and lay the corner stone of the vast dominion of 
British India. In America, the brave 'New England 
hosts take the stronghold of Louisbourg, and the gal- 
lant Wolfe, scaling the heights of Abraham, as it were 
buys with his heart's blood the victory over Mont- 
calm and the surrender of the great French citadel of 
Quebec. An irresistible flood of British conquest 
sweeps round and round the world ; and the humbled 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 161 

monarcli of France, making peace in the year 1763, 
yields up to Great Britain all Canada, and all Louis- 
iana east of the Mississippi, excepting only the dis- 
trict and city of E"ew Orleans, which, with all the 
rest of Louisiana, is given to the Spaniards, by a pri- 
vate treaty made with Spain the year before. 

Thus this great garden land, this granary for the 
nations, this home for that better time coming, tc 
which we all look forward with such longings and 
such love, passes from the grasp of hereditary mon- 
archy, of the ancient French divine-right rulers, from 
under the heavy shadow of dead mediseval law and 
dying feudal tenures, into the hands of England and 
of Spain. ISTot, however, into their hands as in fee ; 
not in permanent proprietorship ; but in trust, for the 
future use and behoof of a people whose career, as 
we hope, shall fulfill in the near future the dreams of 
the long past, and realize that golden time of the 
world's history which the prophets saw in shadow, 
which the poets have told in broken words and vain 
aspirations after adequate expression, which all good 
men pray for and look for ; the period when the trust- 
worthiness of the people shall be vindicated by their 
righteousness ; when the true equality of the nation 
shall be found, not in levelling those above, but in the 
rising of those below, by a celestial gravitation, to 
the level of the highest ; when humanity, free, edu- 
cated, justified, the Bible in its hand and the love of 



162 PIONEEES, PREACHEE8 AND PEOPLE. 

God in its heart, and led hj His Holy Spirit, shall 
stand as upon a lofty mountain summit of attainment, 
not upon a ghastly peak of cold sterility and eternal 
ice, but where the smile of God makes summer sun- 
shine, and God's love makes all the air benign; 
where all humanity is bound up together in the bun- 
dle of God, in bonds of brotherly love and kindness. 



Lecture IV. 



THE RED M:EIS5^; 



WAK OF PONTIAC. 



163 



THE RED MEN, AND WAE OF PONTIAC. 

At the commencement of Europe's acquaintance 
with the Indians this side the Mississippi, so far as we 
can calculate, from 180,000 to 300,000 of the red 
men occupied that tract of country now included 
within the limits of our republic, and lying between 
the Atlantic and the Father of Waters. These abo- 
riginal tribes were divided into three families — the 
Algonquins, the Iroquois, and the Mobilian races. 
The Mobilians occupied the region of country lying 
south of the Ohio Eiver and east of the Mississippi, 
including the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, western 
Georgia, western South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, 
Mississippi, and Louisiana. The L'oquois, or Five 
iNTations, subsequently increased to six by the addi- 
tion of the Tuscaroras, who migrated from western 
Carolina, dwelt in the western part of New York. 
The remainder of the country was occupied by the 
tribes of that great family known as the Algonquins. 
"Whilst there were certain tribal peculiarities, certain 
distinctive features, marking and separating these 
tribes, they yet shared traits and features in common, 
showing them to belong, all of them, to one great 

165 



166 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

parent stock. Their manners and customs, their 
views and opinions, modes of action and forms of 
speech, afford ns perfectly reliable evidences of this. 

The Indian is the child of the wilderness, born 
amidst its rugged grandeurs, cradled amidst its 
storms, surrounded with its vastness, schooled by it 
from his earliest infancy in the development of his per- 
ceptive faculties, almost to the exclusion of his rea- 
soning powers ; employed in those occupations which 
develop athletic strength of body, the chase, war, pre- 
datory incursions upon his neighbors ; seeking his 
food from boundless hunting-grounds. K'urtured in 
a school like this, the delicacy of his senses has 
passed into a proverb ; and he acquired such fineness 
of eye, such exquisiteness of ear, as is scarce paral- 
leled or approximated in the records of history. 

The relation between the parent and the child 
among the Indians constitutes, it seems to me, a pe- 
culiar feature, and one marking them among the na- 
tions of the earth, distinct from all others. What is 
called parental authority, was hardly known among 
them. Tlie child was brought up in the wigwam of 
its parents ; but they never expected, so it seems, to 
impose on it their authority, their will, their command. 
The child grew up his own master, basking and sport- 
ing around the door of the bark lodge, enjoying the 
care of the mother, the notice of the father, until, 
attaining nearly our own age of majority, he was pre 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 167 

pared by vigil, fast, seclusion among rugged rocks in 
the depths of inaccessible forests — tried by visions and 
dreams, and communings with what he thought the 
Great Spirit — ^for his future career of heroism and 
conquest. American children, carried in their early 
years, as captives, to the homes of the Indians, nur- 
tm*ed and trained by their adopted red fathers and 
mothers, asseverate, and their evidence is conclusive, 
that they have never seen a hand raised by a parent 
against a child — and yet, so far as the conditions of 
their iron nature would permit, such tractableness, 
such docility, such loyalty, such glad and willing 
obedience from children to parents, is rarely to be 
found even in the highest stages of civilized society. 
That opposite beliefs are current in the popular mind, 
I well know ; and that there are examples of barba- 
rous desertion, of inhuman cruelty from children to- 
ward their aged parents, when the latter have grown 
to be an incumbrance, this I know ; but these are the 
exceptions — ^the other is the rule. 

One of the primal elements of the Indian character 
is hero worship, and if Mr. Carlyle is intent upon con- 
solidating and organizing his Utopian society upon 
this basis, I know of no realm or clime to which he 
may resort with such hopes of success as to the Eocky 
Mountains of our own continent, where, among the 
Blackfeet, the Sioux, the Apaches, and all those wan- 
dering tribes, he will find this element in the full 



168 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

grandeur of its supremacy. The child is taught it 
from his earliest infancy. When iirst he can inter- 
pret the words spoken around the watch-fire, in the 
sombre lodge of his people ; when the grey-haired 
fathers of the tribe, in the long evenings of the win- 
ter time, when the chase is no longer open to them, 
and the war-path ceases to invite them, over the blaze 
of their household fires, relate the deeds of the fore- 
fathers of the tribe, and tell the traditions of the olden 
time — then the children are wont to listen with eager 
interest to all these recitals, to cherish in their memo- 
ries and in their hearts the admiration of this older 
time, and to resolve to emulate their ancestors, and 
to surpass, if possible, their deeds of prowess and 
hardihood. 

And these old chief and sachems, wise men, held 
in universal reverence, to whom is paid a sort of ho- 
mage, not only of the intellect, but of the heart — 
these old men, by this kindly and genial influence 
upon the juvenile character, while that character is 
yet plastic in their hands, do much to determine its 
strength and scope. Hence the reverent loyalty to 
which I have referred, from the younger members of 
the tribe to the older, first in the relation of child to 
parent, and then, more generally, in that of junior to 
senior. And I fancy that in these times of ours, of ex- 
citement and turmoil, of self-conceit, arrogance and 
presumption, when the young exaggerate their powers 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 169 

and capabilities, when juvenility is set in, or usurps, 
every liigli place, when the young man takes grey 
hairs for the tokens of a dotard, and a wrinkled face 
for the sign of a driveller — feels that he is the great 
object on whom the gaze of the world, and in whom 
the hope of the future, is concentrated — in these wild 
times of ours, with their rash enterprises, their fury 
and folly, filibustering, factions and seditions — I 
fancy that in this age of Young America, many good 
lessons might be learned from the Indian ancestors 
of the soil, the red aborigines ; who, whatever of the 
noblest manhood they lacked, had, at least, respect 
for the aged, and reverence for those wiser than 
themselves. 

In that wdld, unfettered, disjointed democracy, 
where the will of the people — but even that com- 
pletely subordinate to the will of the minority or the 
individual, for itself or himself — was the prominent 
source of power, men were exalted for their wisdom. 
The aged were the repositories of tradition, the re- 
pertories of good counsel, the vehicles of instruction ; 
they could not only tell of times long past, of ances- 
tors long departed, but they could tell the pathways 
of the woods, the old feuds of the tribes, the manner 
of leading the young men to combat and to triumj)h ; 
and this attribute of abstract and practical wisdom 
exalted men to chieftainship. Their sachems or 
wise men were their leaders in all matters of coimsol 

8 



170 

ind debate, and the young men deferentially listened, 
standing around, their swarthy figures leaning against 
the door-posts of their cabins, or against some no- 
ble tree. While the father spoke, the sons listened 
in silence, and the words of the aged fell upon their 
ears and their hearts like the dew from the brow of 
the evening. 

There was another kind of chieftainship, however ; 
another sort of authority besides this of wisdom in 
matters of counsel and debate. Those who were en- 
terprising and dauntless, who burned to lead their 
brethren to war, could nominate themselves to a sort 
of temporary chieftainship — a war chieftainship. 
These, if they had any quarrel to settle, any wrong 
to avenge, any hope of success in some foray, were 
accustomed, after vigil, fast, incantation — after dwell- 
ing apart until their features w^ere harsh, their bodies 
shrunken, and they were reduced halfway to inani- 
tion, — coming back to the wigwams of the nation, 
to send invitations through the tribe, to all the young 
men to meet them at a festival. Here abundant pro- 
vision was spread before the guests, the chief dainty 
being commonly dc ;'s meat ; and all must be dis- 
patched before they were allowed to depart. He who 
had summoned them, meanwhile, sat in silence, ab- 
staining from all gratification of appetite, albeit nearly 
famished. When the festival was ended, his body 
painted black, he springs into a ring prepared for the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 171 

purpose, ill the centre of whicli stands a blackened 
post ; around this he marches, singing a sort of reci- 
tative, a monotonous cadence, in which he recounts 
the deeds of his forefathers and his own heroic 
achievements, every now and then brandishing his 
tomahawk and furiously striking it into the post in 
the centre. Thus he inflames the passions and imagi- 
nation of his audience, till warrior after warrior 
springs into the ring like himself, and in like manner 
chants, recites, raves and strikes. Then rises a fierce 
tumultuous clamor of voices from all, and when they 
have aroused themselves to the highest pitch of frenzy, 
the war-path is prepared. Decorated with fanciful 
paints, and with all the ornaments they can com- 
mand, and marching, in single file, one, two, or three 
miles from the village, if there be a convenient camp- 
ing ground near a brook, here they pause, and dis- 
charge their guns slowly, one at a time. Here tliey 
encamp, and now the ornaments and trinkets are ga- 
thered and sent back to the squaws at the village, to be 
kept till their return. Then, in silence, in single file, 
under the lead of this self-nominated chieftain, they 
proceed upon their errand of destruction and blood. 
"Whatever the result, when they return great rejoic- 
ings are had in the village, or in the wigwams of the 
nation ; and if any have fallen, their manes are ap- 
peased by the sacrifice of such victims as have been 
captured, their torture being considered a lawful and 



172 PIONEERS J PREACHEES AND PEOPLE 

even obligatory offering, that sliall satisfy the spirits 
of the dead. 

But this portraiture of Indian character, intended 
as a sort of introduction to the theme of the occasion, 
is drawing ' me on too far. I must hasten to com- 
plete the rough outline, though with the omission of 
many interesting j)oints. The leading and most re- 
markable peculiarities of the Indians are, indomitable 
resolution and endurance, haughty pride, daring and 
arrogance toward an enemy, a calm and unmoved 
exterior, that hides impenetrably all secrets of 
thought and feeling, as a mantle of ice and snow the 
blazing fires of the volcano beneath ; and a natural 
wild independence, nourished and confirmed by their 
solitary perilous lives ; which, although they may act 
voluntarily under the guidance of these self-appointed 
chieftains, preserves them unconstrained by any law, 
subject to no authority, bound to none by fealty, and 
subordinating themselves only to the heroic virtues 
and preeminent abilities of their few great states- 
men and w^arriors. Such salient peculiarities, exem- 
plified, too, in such endless displays of savage hero- 
ism and skill and strength, cannot but open to the 
student of human nature a chapter of absorbing in- 
terest. 

All three of the great families, Mobilians, Iroquois, 
and Algonquins, though the innumerable battles be- 
tween and among themselves sprinkled the vrhoie 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 173 

continent with blood, were "iinited by one singular 
and wide-extended bond of friendship, which well 
deserves a short consideration. This was that sort 
of free-masonry, or association into fraternities, which 
may be called the Totemic, as depending upon the 
signs or emblems of these families, called their 
Totems. Such emblems were the Hawk, the Eagle, 
the Tortoise, the Bear, the "Wolf, the Snake. And as 
these associations were limited neither to one nation 
nor set of nations, so we find, for instance, a family 
of the Wind, among both Mobilians and Iroquois ; 
a family of the Tortoise, both among the Iroquois 
and the Algonquins. 

The brotherhood of the totem bound its mem- 
bers, whether in peace or war, to aid and comfort 
each other in whatever need. The lonely wanderer, 
weary and starving after a long and unsuccessful 
chase, could never ask in vain for relief and ad- 
mitance at the cabin of one of his brethren of the 
totem, however far removed his language, tribe, or 
blood. This singular association a little alleviated 
the many horrors of the constant warfare of the 
hunters of the woods. Another of its rules was, 
that members of one family or clan should not in- 
termarry with each other ; but that the young man 
of the totem of the Tortoise must choose his wife 
from the family of the Bear or the Hawk, or of 
any totem but the Tortoise. This provision, in strict 



174 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

conformity witli j)liysiological trutli, was well calcu- 
lated to perpetuate the physical vigor and hardi- 
hood, the integrity and individuality of the race. 

Hereditary distinctions, so far as they existed 
among the Indians, descended not directly, in the 
male line, but collaterally, through the female. 
Thus, it was not the son of the chief V\dio inherited 
his chieftainship after him, but the son of the sis- 
ter, or some female relative of the cliief. ISTor was 
even this inheritance sure or necessary. 'No mantle 
fell by any law of succession upon unworthy 
shoulders. Tlie candidate for the autnority of his un- 
cle received and retained his power, if he did receive 
it, because he also was preeminently wise in council, 
powerful in debate, sagacious in planning, and heroic 
in strife. Wanting these merits, he fell unresistingly 
into a private station, and the poorest and obscurest 
youth of the tribe, if his abilities entitled him, as- 
sumed the power of sachem. Insignia the ofiice had 
none. 

Having thus hastily sketched out some j)rominent 
traits of Indian character, I now come to the more 
immediate subject of this lecture : the great conspi- 
racy organized against the encroaching whites, by 
one of the greatest, if not the very first of Indian 
statesmen and warriors ; and to the life and character 
of its leader — the AVar of Pontiac, tlie Ottawa. 

In 1760, near the close of the old Frencn war. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 175 

when the three victorious armies of England had met, 
converging at Montreal; when Canada had been 
subjugated, and the French empire was about to 
cease over the new continent, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, 
commander-in-chief of the English forces in this 
country, dispatched a E"ew Hampshire ranger. Ma- 
jor Eobert Eogers, with a party of his men, to take 
possession of the French forts west of the lakes. This 
Major Eogers was a companion in arms of old Israel 
Putnam; an experienced and successful Indian 
fighter, of desperate courage, yet of the coolest and 
most sly and cautious prudence. A tall, strong man, 
of a somewhat evil countenance, he was little trou- 
bled with conscience, was strongly suspected of 
treachery during the Eevolutionary war, and, indeed, 
became a colonel in the British service ; and last— an 

odd feature in the character of a backwoodsman he 

possessed no inconsiderable tincture of good litera- 
ture, having published a well-written journal of his 
adventures as a ranger, and even— it is believed— all 
or part of " The Tragedy of Ponteach," a drama of 
the fortunes of the very chieftain of whom I am about 
to speak. 

This hardy adventurer, at the head of tvro hundred 
men, in a fleet of whaleboats, proceeded as far as to 
the site of the present city of Cleveland, which he 
reached in JSTovember, 1760. Here his advance was 
arrested by a party of Indians, who met hini, sayioo- 



176 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

tliat they were the envoys of one Pontiac, the mo- 
narch of all that realm, and who bade him halt there 
■until a conference should he had with him. 

Thus steps forth, for the first time within the light 
of history, from the obscurity of his small tribe — the 
Ottawas, fugitives among the great Algonquin na- 
tion, the Ojibwas of Lake Superior, from the destroy- 
ing fury of the terrible Iroquois — the great chief, Pon- 
tiac, sometimes even called the Emperor of the Ottawa 
Indians, so extensive was his sway, and so vast his 
power. 

Before nightfall, the great chief made his appear- 
ance, and proudly demanded wherefore the English 
were in his country ? Pogers made answer, tliat the 
English, having conquered the French, were now 
taking possession of the forts of the vanquished, and 
that this was his errand to Detroit. Takins: until the 
next day to answer, the Indian chieftain concluded 
with prompt decisive wisdom that the English power 
was, in truth, becoming uppermost, and that he would 
worship the rising sun. He returned and made a 
corresponding reply ; and on the journey, v/hich the 
English party completed successfully, averted at least 
one intended attack by the Detroit Indians. 

While with Pogers, Pontiac was very inquisitive 
to learn how the Eno^lish manufactured sucli 2:uns of 
the black rock called iron ; how cloth was woven, aud 
po^^'der made ; how they drilled and disciplined their 



OS THE MISSISSIPPI. 177 

troops ; and asked a tliousand otlier questions about 
European matters. This man was the head chief of 
all the Ottawas, and high in the esteem of all the 
neighboring tribes on the peninsula which projects 
from the main base of the continent, and is surrounded 
by lakes Michigan, Huron, St. Clair and Erie. The 
Ojibwas, TVjandots, Pottawatomies, and other neigh- 
boring tribes entertained for him a sort of reverence, 
similar in kind, and even greater in degree, than that 
afterward commanded by Tecum seh, nimself — as were 
King Philij) and Pontiac — of Algonquin blood. 

A year or two passed away, and British troops and 
British influences had replaced those of France 
through all the vast belt of inland possessions which 
had for nearly a century owned the power of the 
French king. It is not necessary here to describe 
the difference, so often enlarged upon, between the 
light-hearted, social and plastic Frencli, and the 
haughty, gruff, and arrogant English, in their inter- 
course with the punctilious and irritable sons of the 
forest. Instead of the generous and easy hospitality, 
the careful, courteous, and indulgent observance, with 
which the French officers and traders had so judi- 
ciously and successfully treated the Indians, they 
were suddenly everywhere used with rude overbear- 
ing insolence, neglected, driven off with curses, and 
even with blov\'s — the last indignity to which an In^ 
dian could be subjected. 



178 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

And wliile this imliappj, invariable course on the 
part of the English, together with the brutal swindling 
of their traders, the rapid advance of tlieir settle- 
ments, the ruin of their hunting-grounds, and the 
swift and steady circumscription of their territories 
kindled all along the vast extent of the Indian fron- 
tier the smoldering exasperation and bitter enmity 
that ever and anon flamed out into murders and de- 
vastating inroads by individuals and war-parties of the 
young men of one and another tribe ; the chiefs them- 
selves, long accustomed to the special distinctions and 
valuable presents which formed so agreeable a part of 
the French system of colonial administration, were 
still more bitterly mortified and enraged at the neg- 
lects and insults which they received from the coarse 
and proud men with whom the British forces were 
almost always ofiicered. 

Pontiac felt all this, and felt it the more pro- 
foundly, by as much as the depth of his intellect and 
the strength of his passions and his pride surpassed 
those of his savage contemporaries. But his wrath, 
and sorrow, and mortification, were yet a thousand- 
fold more inflamed by disappointments of a charac- 
ter which very few of the tribesmen under his com- 
mand could even comprehend, much less sympathize 
with. 

The dream and desire of his life was, the progresy 
and improvement of his people, and their advance ir. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 179 

power and in hapj^iness. And so just and far-reacli- 
ing were the views of this wild Ottawa sachem, that 
he comjDrehended the necessity of the mannfactures 
of civilized races, and would fain have rendered the 
tribes independent of both English and French, in 
this respect, by enabling them to su^Dply all their own 
wants. He neither loved nor feared the English or 
the French ; and his alliance with each, and his pre- 
ference of either, was decided singly by the advan- 
tage which he hoped thus to secure to his race. So 
long as the French held much territory and many 
fortresses in America, he remained in alliance with 
them. When they were conquered, and the places 
of their troops filled by the red-coated soldiery of 
England, he as promptly made friends with the 
English. 

But the hopes of elevating and bettering his race, 
which, though delusive, had been long maintained 
by the fair professions and careful external obser- 
vances of the Frenchmen, were quickly quenched 
by the more honest rudeness, neglects and insults, 
which the British officers inflicted upon the Indians ; 
and Pontiac soon perceived that the Ottawa nation, 
and all the Indian tribes, would perish, unless their 
white invaders should be destroyed, or their progress 
arrested. This design he at once set about accom- 
plishing; and forthwith he organized a conspiracy, 
far the most gigantic ever originated bv an Indian on 



180 PIONEEES, PKEACHEE8 AND PEOPLE 

this continent, and which, for extent, secrecy, and 
ability of conception and execution, will vie with 
any plot in history. 

His own personal qualifications, and the circum- 
stances of the time, made the opportunity a perfect 
one. In the prime of a leader's life — being about 
fifty years old — despotic ruler of the confederated 
tribes of the Ottawas, Pottawatomies, and their third 
ally, the great tribe of the Ojibwas — long possessed 
of a paramount influence over all the Indians of Illi- 
nois, and known and honored throughout all the wide 
territories of the Algonquin race — no other chieftain 
could have aroused such hosts as he, or could have 
sustained or controlled their wrath so long ; nor were 
the Indians at any other time ever so extensively and 
fiercely hostile to their white aggressors. From the 
distant trading-stations in the cold regions beyond 
Lake Superior, to the far southern tribes back of the 
settlements in Carolina and Georgia, the savages were 
all yet hot with their anger of the recent strife in 
which they had fought for the French ; and this 
wrath was still more vehemently enkindled by the 
insulting treatment of which I have spoken, by the 
brutal conduct and enormous impositions of the Eng- 
lish fur-traders, and still more by the ominous rapid- 
ity with which the white frontier marched westward, 
destroying one hunting-ground after another, covering 
the lands, and annihilating or expelling the tribes. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 181 

In the latter portion of the year 1762, therefore, 
there went ont from the Ottawa village, which stood 
jnst below Lake St. Clair and above Fort Detroit, 
on the Canada side of the river, many messengers. 
They sped into the distant forests of the northern 
Algonqnins beyond the great lakes ; to the banded 
nations of the L'oqnois ; to the pacific Delawares in 
Pennsylvania; to the savage Tuscaroras, and the 
warlike Mobilians, west of Carolina and along the 
Gulf coast ; to the various tribes all along the Mis- 
sissippi ; and to the nations of the Illinois country. 
Everywhere they carried the great red war-belt and 
the words of the great Pontiac ; and everywhere, in re- 
sponse to the wild call of the savage envoys, the 
young men rose up and prepared for war. To all 
was appointed a certain time in the next May, when 
every tribe was to exterminate the garrison nearest 
it, and the whole wild host were then to break in 
upon the settlements. And all the savage confede- 
rates, and Pontiac himself— who was in this deluded 
with all the rest — expected decisive succor from the 
armies of the French king, which they believed to be 
on the march to recover their great Canadian posses- 
sions. This expectation was kept up by the reports 
of the Canadian French, and even by forged letters, 
giving advice of the march of French troops up the 
St. Lawrence. 

Tlie spring arrives ; and in all the long range of 



182 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

English/orts, from Micliilimackinac and Sault Ste. Ma- 
rie, to the northwestward, to Fort Niagara, and all 
along the line of lake forts, Detroit, Sandusky and 
Presqu' Isle, and south by Yenango and Fort Pitt to 
the frontier posts in the west of Virginia, all is safe 
and secure. Here and there have been heard or seen 
indistinct signs of irritation or disturbance among the 
savages ; and in one instance — at Fort Miami — the 
commander had even heard of the war-belt, held a 
council with the Indians about it, reproved them, and 
sent the news, and their cunning disclaimers, to Ma- 
jor Gladwyn, at Detroit, and he to Sir Jeffrey Am- 
herst, at New York. But none dreams of anything 
worse than a temporary state of uneasiness among 
the tribes ; and the English forces in his majesty's 
colonies in North America remain dispersed and fee- 
ble, and all the royal posts careless and almost unre- 
strainedly open to the Indians. 

Pontiac himself determined to commence the war 
by attacking Fort Detroit, the strongest of all the 
English posts in the Indian country, except Fort Pitt. 
After the Indian fashion, he at first tried stratagem. 
Having unsuspectedly made a satisfactory reconnois- 
sance of the interior of the post, he entered it some 
days afterward, on pretence of a council, with three 
hundred chosen w^arriors, all armed for war, and witli 
their guns cut short and hidden under their blankets. 
But Major Gladwyn, the English commander, a cool 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 183 

and brave man, had been put on his guard only the 
night before bj his Indian favorite, a beautiful 
Ojibwa girl named Catharine. Making all the ne- 
cessary preparations, therefore, he deliberately ad- 
mitted this savage host. They saw with dismay the 
military array of the garrison, and only after 
uneasy delay would they seat themselves and go 
through the deceitful ceremonies under cover of which 
they had intended to murder the commandant and his 
force, and to throw open the gates to the Indian army 
without. Pontiac made a speech, as usual on such 
occasions, professing friendship and peaceful inten- 
tions as if he had as heretofore come only for rum 
or for presents. He even raised his hand with 
the peace-belt of wampum, the giving of which 
was to have signalled the onset of his braves, 
but paused in s]3eechless amazement when, at that 
very moment, in obedience to Gladwyn's command, 
the rattle and clash of weapons and the roll of the 
drum sounded from without the room. After a short 
and somewhat stern reply from Gladwyn, the Indi- 
ans departed in disappointment and anger, but yet 
quite sure that the English were either utterly ignorant 
of their scheme, or arrant cowards if not, for letting 
them escape alive. And accordingly, Pontiac visited 
Gladwyn with a few companions next day, to endea- 
vor to confirm him in a belief in their peaceful inten- 
tions, and one da}^ afterward, tried to obtain admis 



184 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

sion into the fort witli a large number of his warriors. 
Being now briefly and sternly refused, the savages, 
bursting at once into all the fiendish rage of Lidian war- 
fare, murdered two English families who lived at a 
short distance, and the next day closely invested the 
fort ; a mixed and numerous swarm of four nations, Otta- 
was, Pottawatomies, "Wyandots and Ojibwas, all under 
the command of the great Ottawa war-chief Pontiac. 

And now all along the far-stretching frontier, the 
dark forests swarm with war-parties. All the 
English posts west of the mountains were attacked. 
Traders, travellers and emigrants, the forlorn hope of 
the advancing invasion of the wdiite settlements, 
were killed. Every secluded farm or lonely hamlet, 
of all those that fringed the interval between 
hunting-grounds and farms, w^as burned. Hundreds 
and himdreds of families were exterminated, oi 
driven back within the area of the denser settle- 
ments scared and penniless, and too often with the 
loss of some of the beloved circle. 

Such was the perfection of this gigantic project, 
and the secrecy of its thousands of confidants for 
months together, that the savage outbreak was 
nowhere expected except for those few hours of 
warning at Detroit — and even there it was many 
days before Gladwyn would believe it to be more 
than a temporary outbreak of anger, or that all the 
posts were assaulted so nearly together that none 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 185 

could assist any other. One after anotlier, in rapid 
succession, eight of them fell. On the 16th of May, 
Fort Sandusky was surprised by a body of Indians, 
who gained admittance as friends, and murdered all 
but the commander and two or three of the garrison. 
On the 25th, St. Joseph's, at the south end of Lake 
Michigan, was seized in a similar manner, eleven 
men of the little garrison having been killec'., the 
other four made prisoners, and the fort plundered ; all 
within less than two minutes after the signal yell 
was given. Two days afterward. Fort Miami, on the 
Maumee, was surrendered to the savages. Ensign 
Holmes, the commander, having been enticed out 
and shot dead, and the sergeant taken prisoner. On 
the 1st of June, a similar stratagem made the Indians 
masters of Fort Ouatanon on the Wabash, the garri- 
son, however, being all preserved alive, and sent 
prisoners to the Illinois country. On the 4:th, the 
Ojibwas, by means of a game of ball called lagga- 
tiway^ surprised Fort Michilimackinac, massacred 
nearly all of the garrison, made prisoners of the rest, 
and seized the large quantities of liquor, stores and 
merchandise, public and private, accumulated in 
that important depot of the Indian trade. On the 
15th, after a siege of twenty-four hours, eighteen of 
them of incessant furious attacks, with the aid of 
intrenchments and mines, and of desperate hardihood 
in defence. Fort Presqu' Isle was surrendered, and 



186 PIONEERS, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

the garrison, despite a capitulation providing that 
they might retire to the nearest post, were sent 
prisoners to the camp of Pontiac at Detroit. On the 
18th, Fort Le Boeuf, a few miles south of Presqu' 
Isle, on a branch of the Alleghany, was attacked 
toward nightfall by a large body of Indians, and set 
on fire by fire-arrows ; but the commander and his 
little squad of thirteen men, desperate with their 
horrible peril, cut a way ont through the rear of the 
blockhouse while the Indians were waiting to see 
them driven out through the door by the flames, and 
fled away to Fort Pitt; six of them, utterly exhausted, 
being left behind in the woods. And lastly, Fort 
Yenango, still further south, at the junction of the 
same stream with the Alleghany, was about the same 
time surprised by a large force of Senecas, wdio, 
admitted as friends, murdered all the garrison except 
the commander, tortured him for several nights over 
a slow flre until he died, burnt down the works, 
and departed. Fort Pitt, Fort Ligonier, some 
distance southwest of it, and Fort Augusta, on the 
Susquehanna, w^ere also attacked, but the Indians 
were repulsed. 

And now the English held not one fortified post 
west of Fort Pitt, save Detroit alone, where the 
undismayed Gladwyn still maintained himself, 
though closely beleaguered by the great confederate 
host under Pontiac. The vigor and constancy of 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 187 

this siege are without precedent or parallel in Indian 
history. From the beginning of May until the end 
of October did the power and influence of their 
indomitable leader hold the- savao-e host in watcliful 
array against the fort; wearying the scanty garrison 
with a fire of musketry that left them no rest day or 
night; contriving plan after plan to destroy the two 
small vessels which remained under the protection 
of the works, and served to guard the water-front ; to 
rake the north and south sides of the walls, and 
to make an occasional attack upon the enemy's 
camj). 

'No other Indian chieftain — at least none of pure 
blood, for an exception must be made in favor of 
General Alexander McGillivray, the chief of the 
Creeks — ever showed such breadth and quickness of 
mind in comprehending and practising the arts of 
civilized life, a characteristic not less indicative of the 
lofty rank of his intellect, than was that vast mag- 
netic power which enabled him so long to concen- 
trate and wield the forces of those flitting and 
unstable warriors of the woods. Unable to read or 
write, he employed one secretary to write letters and 
another to interpret those received, and with diplo- 
matic shrewdness, kept each ignorant of the business 
of the other. To satisfy until he could pay them, 
the French Canadians from whose live stock he was 
forced to support his army, he issued securities, of 



188 PIONEEES, PKEACHEE8 AND PEOPLE 

tlie nature of notes of hand, drawn on bircli bark 
and signed with his totem, the otter, which were all 
punctually redeemed. He organized a regular com- 
missariat department, gathering into one stock the 
provisions thus collected, and which he levied after a 
fixed rate from the Canadians in the neighborhood, 
and distributing them again to his forces ; rigidly 
protecting the farms from depredation, and even 
making his followers avoid trampling on growing 
crops. 

ISTot less remarkable were the bravery and versa- 
tile skill employed in the operations for attack. All 
the slender means of Indian warfare were exhausted 
in assaulting the palisades of the fort. Eepeated 
attempts w^ere made to burn the two vessels, by 
fire-rafts sent down the river. A detachment ol 
nearly a hundred men, sent to relieve the fort, was 
surprised by a party of Wyandots when within thirty 
miles of their destination, sixty of them taken or 
slain, and the rest driven back to the eastward in but 
two of their eighteen boats ; and the ample stock of 
provisions and ammunition intended for the besieged, 
all fell into the hands of the Indians. The schooner 
Gladwyn, one of the two vessels attached to the fort, 
was fiercely attacked by the Indians while in the river 
below, on her way np with a small reinforcement, 
and was driven back to the lake, though a second 
attempt carried her up to the fortress in safety, witli 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 189 

her men and supplies. Captain Dalzell, a com- 
panion in arms of General Pntnam, arrived at the 
fort toward the end of July, with a second rein- 
forcement of nearly three hundred men, and obtained 
with difficulty from the cautious Gladwyn, permis- 
sion to lead a party to endeavor to surprise Pontiac's 
camp. But the wary chief, informed by some 
Canadians of the intended attack, ambuscaded them 
on their way, and they were only able to return to 
the fort by the exercise of great skill and coolness in 
manoeuvring, and with the loss of fifty-nine killed 
and wounded. One of the English schooners was 
attacked again, while returning from Magara, and 
in spite of cannon and small-arms, and a most heroic 
defence by her little crew of twelve men, would have 
been taken, had not the Indians been scared at the 
sudden order of the mate to blow up the schooner, 
and all jumped overboard to escape. 

But the obstinate resolution of Major Gladwyn; 
the reinforcements from the ea^^; the weariness of 
this long siege, now severely felt by the Indian host ; 
the failure of their ammunition ; the receipt of a letter 
which the French commander at Fort Chartres had 
reluctantly dispatched at the demand of Sir Jeflrey 
Amherst, and which informed Pontiac that the 
French were at peace with the English, and that he 
could expect no aid from them ; and the approach of 
winter, when the Indians must of necessitv pc^itter 



190 



PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 



themselves abroad in the forests to keep themselves 
alive by hunting — all these causes conspired to dis- 
appoint this central portion of the great design of 
Pontiac. The Wyandots and Pottawatomies had 
made a peace during July, which, however, they 
afterward broke ; but in October they sought, 
together with the Ojibwas, to make a regular treaty. 
Gladwyn consented to a truce, and instantly taking 
advantage of the opportunity, soon had his garrison 
provisioned for the whole winter. And Pontiac, 
cruelly enraged and disappointed, with no forces left 
but his own Ottawas, and now at last giving up his 
hopes of French aid, left Detroit, and departing to 
what is now the northwest part of Ohio, set about 
stirring up the Indians of that region ; intending to 
resume the siege of Detroit in the spring. 

The brief sequel of his war and end of his life are 
soon told. In the spring of 1764, the English govern- 
ment resolved upon a judicious scheme for the 
organization of trade and intei'course with the 
Indians. 

As a necessary preliminary, however, they sent two 
armies, one under Col. Bradstreet, along the lakes, and 
another under Col. Bouquet, through Pennsylvania 
into the heart of tlie Indian country, to bring the 
tribes to submission. Of this latter commander and 
this expedition, it is fit that some account should hero 
be given. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 191 

Col. Heniy Boiiqnet was a native of the Swiss can- 
ton of Berne, was a soldier from liis boyhood, and 
had served nnder Sardinia and Holland, before he 
became lientenant-colonel of the Eojal Americans, 
a corps raised in America, chiefly of Germans, and 
officered by foreigners. It is now the 60th Rifles. 
In this command. Bouquet had already gained a 
high reputation in Pennsylvania, as a noble and ac- 
complished man and soldier. During the previous 
year, while in charge of a small force and a convoy 
for the relief of forts Bedford, Ligonier and Pitt, he 
had commanded at the desperate battle of Bushy 
Run, one of the hardest fought fields ever contested 
between whites and Indians. This was on August 
5th, 1763, when Bouquet's little army, of only about 
five hundred men, many of them invalids from the 
unhealthy service in the West Indies, was suddenly 
attacked while on the march, about twenty-five 
miles from Fort Pitt, by a force of Indians about 
as numerous as the English, but having the great 
advantages of complete knowledge of the forest and 
its warfare. Bouquet, with ready skill, formed his 
men into a circle round his horses and baggage, and 
from one o'clock until eight sustained a furious and in- 
cessant attack. The yelling savages, with a boldness 
very rare in their system of fighting, rushed against 
the slender line of English, with a close and heavy fire ; 
and then, when the Highlanders, after one sharp vol- 



193 PIONEEESj 

lej, cliarged with tlie bayonetj they leaped back out 
of reach, and a moment afterward dashed at another 
portion of the ring. At nightfall they drew off, having 
lost very few, while 60 of the soldiers, besides offi- 
cers, were killed or disabled. Bouquet made his men 
encamp in their order of battle, upon their arms, mak- 
ing every preparation against a night attack ; and thus, 
in momentary expectation of the foe, weary and thirsty 
— for the hill on which they were afforded no water, 
and none dared seek it — and without fire, lest the light 
should guide the forest marksmen, the beleagured lit- 
tle army awaited daylight, the wounded being depo- 
sited within a sort of little breastwork of flour-bags. At 
early dawn next morning the Indians resumed the 
battle in the same manner, attacking furiously, firing, 
and vanishing into the forest whenever the English 
charged forward from their narrow ring. Thus they 
fought until about ten o'clock, sufi'ering actual agonies 
of thirst, their little force gradually thinning under 
the fire of the Indian rifles ; and now the weary ranks 
began to lose strength and courage. Perseverance 
in their cunning tactics must infallibly have given 
the savages the victory ; but at the moment when 
this became evident, the cool and shrewd Eouquet 
snatched it from them by a well-planned stratagem. 
He caused two companies to withdraw from the line 
of defence, as if retreating, toward the centre of the 
circle. The Indians, perceiving this, charged with 



OF THE ]SnSSISSIPPI. 193 

redoubled fuiy upon the weakened line, and were on 
the point of breaking through, when the two compa- 
nies, who had taken advantage of some low and 
wooded ground for their manoeuvre, and had passed 
out of the circle and made a short circuit in the forest, 
burst upon the flank of the Indians, and delivered a 
heavy and deadly volley. The savages, though taken 
entirely by surprise, faced about and intrepidly re- 
turned the fire ; but fled, when these new opponents 
charged violently with fixed bayonets. Two other 
companies, j)laced in ambush for the purpose, as the 
routed savages fled across their front, rose and gave 
them another destructive volley, and then all the four 
charging again together, the savage foe fled, routed 
and entirely broken and discouraged, leaving about 
sixty of their number dead on the ground — an enor- 
mous loss for them. Tlie command, setting out again 
next day, reached Fort Pitt in safety ; and Col. Bou- 
quet received for his courage and conduct in this im- 
portant battle, the thanks of the Pennsylvania Assem- 
bly, and of the king. 

Col. Bouquet was thus naturally selected to head 
the southern of the two expeditions of 1764 against 
the Indians, as he had proved his judgment and skill 
upon the very ground now to be traversed again ; and 
accordingly, a force of about eighteen hundred men, 
regulars, Pennsylvania provincials, and Virginia rifle- 
men, having been mustered at Carlisle on tlie 5th of 

9 



194: PIONEERS, TEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

August, Bouquet assumed tlie command, after the 
troops had been addressed by Governor Penn, and in 
a few days the army marched for Fort Loudon. 
Their commander, well aware of the danger of the 
enter^^rise, used every precaution that experience and 
foresight could suggest. He established the strictest 
discipline, shooting a couj^le of deserters at Fort Lou- 
don before he could enforce it to his mind ; allowed 
not one woman to accomj^any the army except one 
to each corps, and two nurses ; and arranged a care- 
ful and well -protected order of marching, in open or- 
der, in a parallelogram, the baggage and cattle in 
the centre, and with many outlying parties and scouts 
in the woods in advance. When he reached Fort 
Loudon, three hundred of the Ponnsylvanians had 
deserted, and he remained here some weeks to re- 
cruit. Bradstreet, commanding the northern expedi- 
tion, had now reached Presqu' Isle on Lake Erie, 
where a pretended Lidian embassy met him and 
fooled him into negotiations, intending on their part 
merely to prevent his advance, while all the time 
their warriors were murderiug and burning on the 
frontier. But Bouquet disregarded the j)eace thus 
made, and Gage annulled it. 

Setting forward again from Fort Loudon, Bouquet 
readied Fort Pitt in September, and there delayed 
again until October 3d, when, leaving the fore, lie 
pluuged into the untraversed forest, inarching to 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 195 

ward the Indian towns on the pleasant banks of the 
Muskingum. In the same cai'eful order, ready at 
any moment to form in a defensive ring around the 
baggage if attacked, and filling the woods far in ad- 
vance and on the flanks with the Virginia scouts, he 
proceeded, unable to advance more than from five to 
twelve miles a day; until after ten days' difficult pro- 
gress, he fixed himself in the heart of the Indian 
country, and within striking distance of all their vil- 
lages except the Shawanee towns on the Scioto. 

Here the fierce tribes, dismayed at the presence of 
what was to them a mighty host, and conscious that 
they could offer no adequate resistance to Bouquet 
and Bradstreet, met the former; and after some nego- 
tiations, in the course of which their mortification and 
sullen pride, mingled with an evident fear almost ab- 
ject, rendered their speeches, usually so figurative 
and vivid, even dull, spiritless, and common-place, 
the Indians complied with Bouquet's demands, deli- 
vered up more than two hundred prisoners, and faith- 
fully promised to send in the rest in the sj)ring. Af- 
ter deposing a contumacious Delaware chief, and 
causing a successor to be appointed, exacting hostages 
for good behavior, and prescribing the immediate 
sending of a deputation to Sir William Johnson to 
agree upon terms of peace, Bouquet, who had hitherto 
treated the terrified savages with chilling and over- 
awing sternness, relaxed his demeanor, and held au- 



196 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

otlier council, in wliich he treated tliem in a friendly 
manner. 

Many accounts have been given of the extraordi- 
nary scenes at the delivery of the Indian prisoners. 
E'umbers of the frontiersmen who had accompanied 
the expedition, had done so in the hope of regaining 
wives, children, or relatives, in captivity in the wild- 
erness. The whole annals of human history could 
scarcely furnish a record of another scene so moving 
and so wonderful as this for the exhibition of varied 
and violent human passions. Day by day the lost white 
people came back in troops, many of them, power- 
fully held by the strange love of the wilderness, com- 
ing with reluctance, and even bound as prisoners to 
prevent them from fleeing back into the forest. Wo- 
men, even, would fain have remained in the cabins 
of the dusky husbands of their ca^Dtivity, to train their 
young half-breeds in forest nurture. In truth, the 
strangest feature of the scene was the comparative in- 
difference of the rescued captives, contrasting so 
strongly with the overwhelming agitation of the friends 
who sought them. Husbands sought wives, and pa- 
rents children, trembling and weeping, doubtful of 
them when found, changed as they were by the 
growth of years and the exposures of forest life.; and 
the strange magnetism of human passion, seizing 
upon all around, even infected the rudest of the sol- 
diers, who sympathized in the sorrows or the joys of 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 197 

tlie occasion ; many of them not even able to refrain 
from tears. 

One of the most affecting occurrences of the occa- 
sion was the recognition by an aged mother of her 
daughter, who, carried away nine years before, was 
among the captives. The eyes of the parent, sharp- 
ened by natural affection, discerned the features of 
her lost child in those of a swarthv and sunburnt 
young female ; but her long captivity had deprived 
the girl of almost every word of the English which 
she had acquired at the early age when she was 
stolen, and she quite failed to recognize her old mo- 
ther, who lamented with rude, affecting sorrow, that 
the daughter whom she had so often sung to sleep, 
had so utterly forgotten her. Eouquet, a man of 
kind feelings as well as ready intellect, seized the 
hint which the sorrowing mother did not perceive, 
and told her to try the experiment of singing the 
song with which she had put her child to sleep. She 
did so ; and the long-forgotten, simple strain unsealed 
the daughter's memory and awoke her affections at 
once ; and weeping and rejoicing, she fell upon her 
mother's neck. 

But the wondrous magic of the wilderness, the in- 
nate savagery that is somewhere hidden in almost ev- 
ery heart, were singularly proved by the actions of 
some of the captives this day redeemed. Of all the 
white women who had taken Indian husbands, not one, 



198 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

even tlioiigli her children came with her, returned 
willingly to civilized life ; and several of them after- 
ward actually escaped back to tlieir red lords, their 
wigwams, and the forest. 

The business of the expedition thus prosperously 
accomplished, Bouquet and his little army returned 
upon their footsteps, and safely regained the settle- 
ments. The successful leader received a vote of 
tlianks, most flatteringly worded, from the Pennsyl- 
vania Assembly, and another from that of Yirginia ; 
and also a more substantial token of the appreciation 
of his services, in his appointment by the king to the 
rank of brigadier-general, with the command of the 
southern department in ISTorth America. Col. Bou- 
quet did not, however, long survive to fulfill the 
hopes inspired by his remarkable excellences and 
success ; for he was carried off by a fever at Pensa- 
cola, only three years afterward. 

Colonel Bradstreet, permitting himself to be de- 
luded by the Indians as I have stated, accomplished 
but a small part of his intended purposes ; but he 
effectually relieved Detroit, which had now been be- 
sieged more or less closely for fifteen months — for 
Pontiac had recommenced the siege in the S23ring. 

Shut out from hopes of success elsewhere, Pontiac 
now passed into the Illinois country, whither the Eng- 
lish forces had not yet penetrated, and with untiring 
activity began to organize a new league of those 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 199 

tribes tliat inhabited Illinois and dwelt along the 
banks of the Mississippi River. His design was to 
keep closed to the English the rich country of the 
Illinois, by guarding the two approaches to it, by the 
Mississippi and by the Ohio. But although two 
attempts to ascend the Mississippi with detachments 
of British troops were unsuccessful, this last plan of 
the great Indian leader was frustrated by the negotia- 
tion of an English envoy, the fur-trader George Crog- 
han, who moved westward to prepare a path for the 
troops which Gage, Amherst's successor, proposed to 
send to take possession of the ancient French strong- 
hold of Fort Chartres. Finding himself deserted by 
one discouraged tribe after another, and failing to ob- 
tain any aid from the French, either in Illinois or at 
jN'ew Orleans, he at last resolved to seek peace with 
the English ; and meeting Croghan at Fort Ouatanon 
on the Wabash, he concluded an alliance with him, 
which he confirmed at a great council of the northern 
tribes held a short time afterward at Detroit ; ending 
his speech as any other Indian would, by begging for 
rum. 

E'ext spring the great chief proceeded eastward to 
Oswego, where he again confirmed his alliance with 
the English, and gave up the vast plans which 
he had conceived for the preservation of the Indian 
race. Carrying many valuable gifts, he returned 
westward to the Maumee. Here we lose sight of him 



200 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

for four years, which he doubtless spent in hunting 
or in feud, like his warrior brethren. 

In April, 1769, he suddenly and for the last time 
reappears, coming out of his woods into the Illinois 
country, to the great uneasiness of the English 
traders in those parts. He crosses the great river 
and visits his old friend St. Ange de Bellerive, now 
commanding at St. Louis for the Spaniards. After a 
time he hears of some meeting of Lidians across 
the river at Cahokia, assembled there for pleasure ; 
and in spite of the persuasions of St. Ange, who 
knew the enmity of the brutal British fur-traders, he 
persists in going; expressing his contempt for the 
English. At Cahokia, he receives invitation after 
invitation from one friend and another, and accepts 
all. Drinking himself drunk, he goes out of the 
village into the woods, singing magic songs. An 
English fur-trader, seeing him, promptly gives a 
miserable Kaskaskia Indian a barrel of liquor to kill 
him, and promises him something more. Tlie wretch 
followed Pontiac, crept up behind him, and clove his 
head with his hatchet. 

The few followers of the murdered chieftain who 
would have avenged his death, were driven out of 
the village. But the news of the death of the great 
war-chief spread quickly and far ; and his Ottawas 
and their confederate tribes, gathering together, 
came down upon the treacherous and cowardly 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 201 

niinois, exterminated all but tliirtj families of them, 
and a few years afterward cut off all this wretched 
remnant, utterly extinguishing the tribe by the 
adoption of the few children who alone were saved 
alive. 

St. Ange caused the body of the slain warrior to 
be brought across the Mississippi and buried. 'No 
man knows the place of his grave ; but it is some- 
where beneath the multitudinous tread of the busy 
crowds that throng the city of St. Louis. There he 
sleeps; and far away to the northward still are 
vanishing into further wildernesses, into the spirit 
land, the decreasing bands of the Algonquins, who 
yet retain the memory of their greatest chieftain. 
Over them is rushing, as it already rushes over 
his forgotten bones, the vast irresistible ocean of the 
power of the white race. And as most of them are 
already laid, so their scattered remainder soon shall 
lie, trodden under foot, unknown, unremembered ; 
existing, even in history, only as a legend and a 
tradition. Pontiac, sleeping beneath the lofty, 
crowded houses of St. Louis, lies there, the symbol 
and the prophecy of his race, and of its doom. 

Besides Pontiac himself, there are perhaps none 
of the actors in this story whom we need follow 
further, unless it be the beautiful Ojibwa girl, 
Catharine, whose warning saved Detroit. She was, 

8* 



202 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

it is said, severely whipped by Pontiac himself. 
And there is a further tradition that she grew old, 
haggish, and drunken, as the Indian women do ; and 
that in a drunken fit, she fell into a great kettle 
of boiling maple sap, and died miserably. 



Lecture V. 

THE 

OF THE WILDERNESS, 

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 



CABIN HOMES OF THE WILDERISTESS 

AT THE OPENING OF THE REVOLUTION. 

In the year 1768, there was assembled at Fort 
Stanwix, in central JSTew York, on the site of the pre- 
sent city of Eome, a council of the confederated Six 
l^ations, or Iroquois, under the supervision and influ- 
ence of Sir William Johnson, the British agent for 
Indian affairs. It was much desired by sundry par- 
ties interested, that a title to an immense region of 
country lying west of the mountains should, in some 
way or other, be secured from the Indians ; and as 
these bold adventurers, the Iroquois, the wild rovers, 
who laid under contribution their red brethren from 
the seaboard coasts of Maine upon the east, to the 
fast-rushing flood of the Father of "Waters upon the 
west, exacting taxes paid equally by the Shawnees 
and Illinois, and by the Delawares and the Hurons — 
as these wild rovers claimed large districts of country 
besides those which they themselves occupied, the 
agents of the British government thought it well to 
secure this title from them. They claimed, in virtue 
of their conquests, the whole region of country lying 



206 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

upon the south of the Ohio, running from that river 
on the north through the whole extent of the country 
traversed hy the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. 
At this council, assembled about the 1st of I^ovem- 
ber, 1768, Sir William Johnson, who had arranged 
the details and particulars beforehand, with an un- 
scrupulous skill worthy of a modern politician, and by 
means of a series of gifts and presents to these hardy 
warriors, made the purchase, securing, in the first 
place, that whole region lying between the mouth of 
the Cherokee or Tennessee River upon the westward, 
and the Kanawha at the east, for the crown of Great 
Britain ; and the lands from the Kanawha on the 
west to the Monongahela on the east, for such tra- 
ders as had been defrauded or injured during the war 
of Pontiac. Let it be remembered that these Indians 
had, in truth, no more right and title to that land 
than you ; and yet, by the action of its agents and 
officers, the British government executed this agree- 
ment, and by virtue of it, henceforth claimed all that 
district of country lying west of the Monongahela 
and south of the Ohio river. 

Under this treaty it was determined to make a 
grant of 200,000 acres to such officers and soldiers as 
had been engaged in the old French war, and to lo- 
cate it just west of the Kanawha River, within the 
limits of the present State of Kentucky. 

And now — casting a rapid glance to another por- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 20T 

tion of our present vast territory — about the year 
1770 we shall find coasting along the borders of Lake 
Superior upon the northward, ascertaining particu- 
lars and gaining information regarding the copper 
mines of that district, passing thence westward across 
the Mississippi River, and making a long and perilous 
journey into the country of the Dacotah or Sioux 
Indians, a bold and hardy captain from Connecticut, 
one Jonathan Carver. He called the attention of the 
British government and of the eastern colonists to the 
boundless mineral and agricultural wealth within the 
district he had traversed, and bore the first intel- 
ligence of a credible and authentic character in re- 
gard to the Oregon or Columbia River, and the 
country lying west of the Rocky Mountains. 

"We shall find at the same time floating down the 
Beautiful River of the French — the Ohio — a person 
to whom we have had occasion before to allude, the 
young athletic Virginian, George "Washington ; hav- 
ing, in common with his brethren, that American 
peculiarity, a powerful instinct for good land, a 
strong desire after real estate. Pursuing his meander- 
ing course, in flat-boat or canoe, down the peaceful 
current of this river, comes this }' oung Virginian, to 
locate his own right as an officer in the French war, 
and ako the claims of his brother soldiers and officers. 
His eye having been early disciplined in his pursuits 
as a surveyor, and long accustomed to wander as fo- 



208 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

rester and woodman, lie became familiar with all 
forms and phases of nature, a lover of beautiful scen- 
ery, and at the same time skilled in estimating and 
selecting good lands. He revels in the panorama of 
magnificence outspread before him. Here a stately 
deer is browsing upon the river bluff, and yonder an- 
other of his brethren steps proudly down to slake his 
thirst in the peaceful stream. Here herds of buffalo 
ai'e quietly wandering and grazing at their will. The 
woods are crowded with flocks of wild turkeys ; and 
everywhere around him, in the beautiful summer sea- 
son of the year, everything on earth wears the bright- 
est smile of benignity and beauty ; and heart and eye 
of our Virginian gladden and are ravished with de- 
light. He forms the purpose of becoming a settler of 
the West, and but for the near outbreak of the Ame- 
rican Bevolution, no doubt George "Washington would 
have been a great pioneer of western civilization, 
leaving his impress upon its grateful and virgin soil, 
as durably and lastingly as he has now left it upon 
our whole continent. 

Just before this period, a long series of outrageous 
and oppressive proceedings by the government offi- 
cers of iN'orth Carolina, supported and encouraged by 
the royal governor himself, the rigid, overbearing 
and haughty Try on, had thoroughly alienated the 
affections of that colony from the English govern- 
ment. The sheriffs, as collectors, had levied enor- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 209 

mous illegal taxes, for their own private gain ; and 
the courts were courts of anything but justice. In 
their well-founded indignation, all the inland inhabi- 
tants formed themselves into bodies of so-called 
" Eegulators," and while they administered a rude 
but honest justice among themselves, broke up and 
prohibited the sitting of the oppressive regular 
courts. These hardy men violently and successfully 
opposed the stamp act ; and Governor Tryon, irritated 
by their continued resistance to the tyranny of him- 
self and his creatures, issuing from the executive pa- 
lace, headed a levy of the militia, and on the river 
Alamance, gave battle to the forces of the Eegula- 
tors, in the year 1771. The brave countrymen, like 
their fellows at Bunker Hill, fought until their pow- 
der was all expended, and then sullenly fled, having 
lost nine of their own number, and killed just thrice 
as many of their foes. 

Expecting no justice while under the sway of the 
British lion, and exasperated beyond all patience at 
the oppressions, the official injustice and social in- 
dignities they had vainly opposed, these bold and de- 
termined men resolved to flee to the wilderness ; from 
ancient times the refuge of the oppressed and the 
poor. Deserting their homesteads and the hearth- 
stones by which their children had been nursed, and 
where their fondest memories were garnered, with their 
teams, their flocks, their wives and little ones, they 



210 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

toil up the steep ascents of the Alleghany Mountains, 
and pass westward till they find the broad alluvial 
lands of the river Watauga. Here, entering into a 
leasrue with the chief men of the Cherokee nation, 
which held possession of this country, they make just 
and legitimate purchase of a sufiicient extent of terri- 
tory to answer their purpose of agricultural pursuits. 
And here, under leadership of Col. James Robert- 
son, one of the noblest pioneers our history speaks of, 
they establish the first Eepublic ever founded upon the 
soil of the American continent — despising and eschew- 
ing the authority of England, from which tliey had 
only received wrong, outrage, betrayal, and their 
compatriots' deaths. Surrounded by the grandeur of 
the great primitive forms of nature, the towering moun- 
tain lifting its great peak to the clouds, the plains all 
beautiful with the white of the abounding strawberry 
blossom, or the rich red of its fruit ; the rhododen- 
dron, with its bright and genial hues, and the azalea, 
making all the forests crimson with a touch of fire — 
here these hardy men plant themselves, and begin to 
carry their explorations and surveys far to the west- 
ward. This is the germ and the birth-place of the 
present State of Tennessee. 

Still further to the southwest, we find strange events 
transpiring upon the banks of the Mississippi River, 
in the neighborhood of the present city of E'atchez, 
where stood the old French Fort Rosalie, named after 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 211 

the fair dame of the great French noblemai], Count 
Pontchartrain. During the old French war, in 
1755-6, General Phineas Ljman, of Durham, in Con- 
necticut, had buckled on the harness of war, and had 
approved himself a valiant and noble leader, doing 
faithful service in behalf of the colonies until the con- 
clusion of the war. His valor and constancy, his 
rare power of combination, masterful accuracy in de- 
tails, and able generalship, had gained him a place so 
high in the confidence of his countrymen, that the 
reputation which he won so well in his office of ma- 
jor-general and commander-in-chief of the Connecti- 
cut forces, and as commander of the expedition to 
Havana, in 1TG2, was second to that of no man in 
America. Meu high in place in England had also 
repeatedly invited the able, eminent and accom- 
plished provincial soldier to visit the mother country. 
Organizing an association under the name of the 
" Military Adventurers," of the soldiers and officers 
of the war just ended, he accordingly proceeded to 
England as its agent, to solicit for it a grant of the 
desert lands lying on the Yazoo and Mississippi 
rivers. For these associates had heard marvellous 
stories of the richness of the land in the Southwest, 
and desired to settle upon so fair a domain; judging 
that they had a right to claim the grant in return for 
their services to the British government. Gen. Lyman 
arrived in England ; but instead of meeting a kind 



212 PIONEERS, PEEACHEE8 AND PEOPLE 

reception and a cordial acknowledgment of his ser- 
vices, was treated witli coldness and contempt, and 
with mean and cruel ingratitude. He w^as deluded 
with promise after promise, and delay after delay, 
even for years; until the discovery of this long series of 
cheatings came upon him with such crushing violence 
that he fell into absolute listless despondency. The 
noble soldier whose spirit had passed undismayed 
through perils of sea and land, Indian ambuscade and 
pitched battle, unable to bear the thought of return- 
ing, deluded, to his deluded friends, sadly determined 
to bear his fancied ignominy as best he might, in 
distant England, and to lay his dishonored bones 
there. 

Thus the unhappy General Lyman wasted eleven 
years of the prime of life, absent from that home 
which he had left in the flush of present success, and 
with still more radiant hopes beaming from the fu- 
ture — a home made sacred and beautiful, and happy, 
by a lovely wife, by beloved, intelligent, refined and 
highly educated children. And when the faithful 
and patient wife could endure the long heart-break 
no more, she sent her eldest-born to England to bring 
back his father. 

The unhappy father, his paternal affection awak- 
ened at the sight of his boy, consents to return ; and 
the more readily, as the British government has, with 
a liberality too late exercised, at last made the de- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 213 

eired grant, at the intended spot, within the limits of 
the present State of Mississippi, and in what was then 
called western Florida. To General Lyman himself 
was given a special grant of lands broad enough 
for future wealtk; and a promise — never fulfilled 
— of a pension of £200 a year. Bat many of the 
grantees were now hoary old men, and all were 
aged beyond the period of life when men remove 
into wildernesses to undertake the rude, exhausting 
labors of founding new communities. But Gen. Ly- 
man came home, with his grant. His oldest son, a 
youth of brilliant promise, had completed his studies, 
received and held a commission in the armj^, and 
given it up for the practice of law ; had felt to the 
fall the effects of all these high hopes so long de- 
ferred, which prevented him from earnest devotion 
to the law. Tlie long weary suspense and doubt 
hanging over his own prospects, had destroyed health 
of body and mind together, and when the wretched 
father met him, he had sunk from brokenheartedness 
into lanacy. But he carried the hapless youth away, 
hoping that new atmospheres and new scenes might 
give him back his health ; and with a few friends 
proceeded to West Florida, and located his grant. 
Scarcely had he done so, when his son died. In the 
next year, 1775, the desolate father followed him 
to the grave. In 1776, Mrs. Lyman came to this 
fatal country, with her only brother and all lier child 



214 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ren except one son. She died in a few months ; and 
next summer her brother died. 

This expedition, which sailed from Middletown, May 
1st, 1776, passed through a battle with misfortune so 
long, so varied, and so terrible, that it deserves some- 
thing more than a mere reference. Let us briefly 
trace the affecting story. Reaching JS'ew Orleans, 
August 1st, 1776, they begin to ascend the Missis- 
sippi in open boats. Day after day passes ; and they 
are yet dragging their heavily-laden craft against the 
furious current, tlirough sickly airs, and under the ex- 
hausting southern sun. The malaria of the swamps 
begins its fearful work, and one and another of the 
hardy emigrants sicken and die ; while the fated sur- 
vivors, with diminished strength, more slowly drag 
the heavy boats up stream. Boat after boat is left — the 
crew too feeble to draw it — fastened to the willows or 
anchored in the current ; among them that of Captain 
Matthew Phelps. Eeaching Katchez, tlie minister 
of the party, Mr. Smith, who, in genuine Puritan 
style, had accompanied them from Connecticut, falls 
a victim to the fever. The remainder of the party at 
last reaches the site of the intended settlement, where 
General Lyman had, before his death, made some 
small improvements ; and here it is that Madam Ly- 
man follows her hapless husband to another world. 

Captain Phelps, who was left below on the river 
still remained there, his family so reduced bv fevcj 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 215 

and-ague that they could only, at intervals, wait on 
each other at all. His daughter Abigail soon died, 
and the mourning father buried her on the bank, dig- 
ging her grave with his own hands. This was in the 
early part of Sept., 1776. On the 16th, an infant 
son, born at sea on the voyage out, died, and the fa- 
ther again dug a grave and buried his boy by the 
side of his daughter. A companion in misery, named 
Flowers, who had lost all his family, now overtook 
Plielps, and joining forces, they put the ]3roperty of 
both in a larger boat, and worn down almost to skele- 
tons, began again the ascent of tlie river. They were 
still toiling upward on the 12th of October, when, a 
little above Katchez, Mrs. Phelps died, at the house 
of a hospitable planter named Alston, who gave her 
a decent burial. Moving onward again, Capt. Phelps 
reached the mouth of the Big Black, on which river 
h^'s lands lay, on the S-lth of i^ov.; having been almost 
a hundred days in making the trip from 'New Orleans, 
which now occupies a few hours. Weakened by dis- 
ease beyond the power of labor, Phelps here hired a 
man and boy to help him up the river, and himself, 
with the boy, labored at the tow-line, leaving the man 
on board to steer. The boat glides into an eddy, or 
' suck," and her stern catching under a willow, the 
steers«nan is thrown out, but being a sturdy swim- 
mer, escapes to the shore. Phelps's two remaining 
children, a boy of five and a girl of ten years oi age^ 



216 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

worn down by their long and clinging sickness, are 
sitting listlessly upon the bed where they have suf- 
fered so much. The father, from whose arms one 
after another of his beloved has been wrested so ter- 
ribly, in a transport of agony, seeing the boat cir- 
cling in the whirlpool, hastily ties the line to a tree, 
and not being able to swim, creeps out on the willow 
that holds down the boat, hoping to rescue the child- 
ren and carry them ashore. He reaches tlie boat, 
and liis added weight bears down the treacherous 
willow, and the stern under it. But begging the sis- 
ter to sit still while he saves her brother, the fright- 
ened man calls his boy ; the little fellow is wading 
through the water in the boat toward his father, when 
a high wave strikes the bow, it is carried instantly 
under, and the two children are swept almost out of 
his very arms into the devouring whirl of the river. 
Standing helplessly upon the dangerous tree, the mis- 
erable man sees them rise once, clasped in each 
other's arms, and then they disappear forever beneath 
the boiling muddy water ; and bereft before of wife, 
daughter, infant, and now of all his little ones — every 
tie to earth thus rudely severed, and, though it is 
scarcely worth the naming in addition, his little 
proj)erty swept into the gulf, too — the lonely, desolate 
man sadly escapes to the shore and ascends slowly to 
the place of his proposed settlement. A brutal squat- 
ter has usurped his claim, and under the protection 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 217 

of the custom of the land, defies him. Thus left ab- 
solutely alone and penniless, he turns his face again 
to his distant native State ; and there, it is pleasant to 
know, after so many bitter sorrows, he passed the re- 
mainder of his days in peace and comfort ; and saw 
another wife, and other little children, within a happy 
home. He often told the story of his sufferings to 
friend or neighbor, narrating one disaster after an- 
other with the steady resignation of a Christian — all 
but one terrible sight. He could not speak of the 
moment when the flood swallowed down his two 
youngest close before his eyes. 

The survivors of this sturdy band of Connecticut 
farmers, after struggling through so many obstacles, 
became thrifty and successful planters in the country 
round ]N"atchez, with handsome dwellings, large 
estates, and scores of slaves. 

But time passed on, and the American Revolution 
broke out. All these Connecticut people were ardent 
loyalists. The contagion of independence had not 
been carried so far as their distant dwellings. An 
agent of the American Congress, Oliver Pollock, ]iad 
descended from Pittsburg to 'New Orleans, then in 
the possession of the Spaniards, and made arrange- 
ments with the Spanish authorities to supply the set- 
tlements upon the Kentucky, the Cumberland, Ten- 
nessee, and other whig American settlements, with 
ammunition to carry on the war. And a little after, 

10 



218 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

in 1779, there descends the river one John Willing, 
a citizen of Philadelphia, with an American commis- 
sion as colonel. He is plansible of speech and of 
winning address ; he visits these loyal settlers in the 
neighborhood of I^atchez and in other parts of Mis- 
sissippi, gathers them together, makes them many ora- 
tions, wins their confidence, and binds them by oath 
to strict neutrality. They are unwilling wholly to 
renounce allegiance to the British crown, but promise 
not to interfere in the struggle then going on. Wil- 
ling then, ascending the river with a small force, 
seizes, by stratagem, a British war vessel lying there, 
carries her to J^ew Orleans, sells her to the Spanish 
authorities, and with the proceeds spends his time, 
with his companions, in riotous living and debauch- 
ery, instead of apjDlying the money to the pur]30se for 
which it was intended — the purchase of arms. Hav- 
ing wasted the whole, he reascends the river, ravages 
and pillages the estates in the neighborhood of Baton 
Rouge, then in the possession of the English, and 
commences the reascent of the Mississippi to do the 
same at the settlements of ISTatchez. Our Connecti- 
cut settlers in that region, and their neighbors, valor- 
ous men, hearing of the conduct of the desperado, 
and all faith in him — and, unfortunately, in the Ame- 
rican cause — ^thus destroyed, collect themselves to- 
gether, armed and equipped, to punisli him, or at 
least to prevent his piratical designs. He readies 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 219 

the neigliborhood of tlie spot where they are fortified, 
crosses to the other side of the river, and then, by 
means of his artillery, treacherously opens fire on 
them under cover of a flag of truce. This they re- 
turn with such hearty good will that some of his men 
are killed and some taken prisoners. He and the re- 
mainder of them return to "New Orleans, and from 
there he escapes into the country on the banks of the 
Alabama River. The conduct of this desperado 
shook all confidence and faith, on the part of the set- 
tlers, in the integrity and character of the American 
struggle for independence ; and very justly consider- 
ing themselves absolved from their oath of neutrality, 
they resolved to remain loyal to the crown of England. 
About this period France gave evidence of its lean- 
ing to the American cause of independence ; where- 
upon the English government, in anger, declared war 
against France. Spain, also, which had been the 
firm ally of France, gave favorable consideration to 
the designs of the revolutionists ; and England, includ- 
ing her within the ban, declared war against Spain. 
The Spanish government decided to attack the British 
in Louisiana ; and Don Galvez, governor of 'New 
Orleans, ascended the river, took all the British posts 
as far as IS^atchez, and then returned to capture Mo- 
bile and Pensacola. The loyalists, including Col. 
Philip Austin, John Austin, Col. Hutchins, Mr. Ly- 
man, Dr. Dwight, and various other of the Conuecti- 



220 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

cut emigrants before named, now large holders of 
real estate, were unwilling to submit to the autho- 
rity of Spain. Arming themselves, thej attacked the 
weak garrison left in Fort Panmure, formerly Fort 
Kosalie, at l^atchez, and succeeded, by stratagem and 
other means, in dispossessing the Spanish. They 
heard, furthermore, that a large British fleet was 
coming to chastise the Spanish upon the Gulf; but, 
sorrowful to tell, just after their success in ejecting 
the Spanish from the fort, they learned that these ac- 
coimts of coming fleets were all deceptive and untrue. 
And now Don Galvez, having taken Mobile and Pen- 
sacola, invested with great honors and powers, is 
about to come and punish these disobedient British 
subjects of Spain. But they, well knowing the 
treacherous and cruel nature of the Spaniards, re- 
solve, rather than to await their coming and to abide 
their revenge, to abandon their homes and undertake 
the long and adventurous journey to the settlements 
in Georgia. Before them is a trackless wilderness, then 
lyin^ between the Mississippi River on the west and 
the Ogeechee upon the east — a tract of country inha- 
bited only by wild beasts and wilder savages. With 
the bloodhounds of Spain upon their track, more 
than one hundred of these people set out, mounted 
upon horses with their wives and little ones, some of 
the children in arms, with their servants and move- 
ables upon pack-horses, and proceed norteastwardly, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. ^21 

in hopes to reacli the prairie region of Mississippi. 
This is the month of May, 1781. It is an unusually 
diy spring. They gain the prairie country, and no 
water is to be found. Far in the distance before 
them, as the mariner at sea beholds what he supposes 
islands near the blue horizon, so rise upon the level 
prairie clumps of trees, and here they hope for water. 
Toward that they press, only to be disappointed. Thir- 
ty-six hours have passed, yet no drop of cooling liquid 
has touched their lips or tongues. At length a camp 
is formed. Tlie women and children are deposited 
here, and the men start out in parties to search for 
the precious liquid. Tlie whole day is passed ; they 
return, faint, weary, and despairing, their tongues 
hanging out of their mouths, and fall upon the ground 
utterly dejected and brokenhearted. In this emer- 
gency, when man's hardihood and courage has failed, 
female instinct and energy step forward. Mrs. 
Dwight, wife of Dr. Dwight, sallies from the camp, 
attended by several women and one or two men. 
They reach a tract of ground at the foot of a couj)le 
of hills, where, in a spongy spot, she bids the men to 
dig. The spades are stoutly handled ; they come to 
moist earth, to trickling drops, and after a little they 
stay their hands ; for a pure and beautiful fountain 
of water gushes up. Thank God ! is the universal 
exclamation. The news is borne backward to the 
camp, and now all the party, men, women, and child- 



222 PIONEEKS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ren, and their patient, suffering beasts, rusli wildly to 
the fountain — a fountain of life in a parched and 
thirsty land. Dr. Dwiglit stations guards about the 
spring, to prevent an intemperate use of the pure ele- 
ment; and all through the livelong night, men and 
women, and jaded horses, allowed to slake their 
thirst quietly and by slow degrees, drink and drink, 
with a thirst almost unquenchable. And now tliey 
turn to the northwestward to avoid the Indians, the 
Chickasaws on the one side and tlie Choctaws on 
the other, who, it is feared, are in league with tlie 
Spanish. 

Their compass is lost, and they have no guide 
except the sun in heaven, which is often concealed 
by clouds, for now the weather becomes rainy and 
inclement. Ever and anon a prowling party of 
Indians, under the shadow of the night, creep into 
camp and run off horses or plunder baggage. And 
worse than all, a loathsome disease infects tiie 
worn-out company. Having wandered northward, 
nearly to the Tennessee River, they turn about and 
march nearly straight south again to near the present 
city of Aberdeen, Mississippi, wliere tliey cross the 
Tombigbee on rafts of logs. Thence they struggle 
through the wilderness to the Black Warrior River, 
which they cross at Tuscaloosa Falls ; and thence, 
afraid to follow any trail for fear of enemies, they 
go wandering up and down in their helpless misery, 



OP THE MISSISSIPPI. 223 

until they find themselves in the mountainous 
regions of the upper part of Alabama. Then they 
direct their steps toward the Georgian settlements, 
hoping to reach them by way of the Cherokee 
nation. One day, to their terror — for a human form 
inspires them with nameless fears of Indian ambus- 
cades and savage tortures — they see three men 
advancing on the rude path which they are pursuing, 
to meet them. The strangers advance, and are 
found to be an old trader among the Indians, and 
two Chickasaws with him. The rugged frontiersman, 
shocked at the wretched appearance of the forlorn 
and famine-stricken troop, served out to them all 
his provisions, and his last gallon of tafia or trading- 
rum. He added to his kind gifts, kind advice, 
admonishing them to avoid the Tennessee mountains, 
and the Cherokees, who were mostly whiggish in 
alliance and feeling, and rather to turn southward 
and venture themselves among the Creeks, trusting 
to their loyalist attitude, and to the influence and 
well-known humanity of their chief, the celebrated 
Colonel Alexander McGillivray. 

This advice they implicitly followed ; turned south- 
ward once more ; once more crossed the intervening 
ranges of mountains, for two hundred miles, often 
walking with feet bare, torn and bleeding ; obliged 
to lead their laden horses along the perilous and 
pathless rocks. And now they reach the Coosa 



224 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Kiver, in Antauga County, in central Alabama. 
Exliansted and feeble, the deep, strong and rapid 
current and the dangerous obstructing rocks of the 
noble river are obstacles which they have not 
strength remaining to overcome, and they lie down 
upon the banks in listless desj)air, unable even to 
build a raft. They might all have perished in their 
stupid discouragement, had it not been for the 
courage and resolution of the same Mrs. Dwight 
who discovered the fountain that saved their lives 
before. She declared that if there "was even one 
man bold enough to go with her, she Avould at least 
try to cross the river, and find a canoe or some better 
ford. Her husband and one other man, ins]3ired by 
her brave spirit, swore she should not risk her life 
alone, and all three swam their horses across the 
stream ; carried down by the current, and at least 
once plunged completely under water, by leaping 
from a ledge. On the other side they found, a mile 
above, a large canoe, stove on the rocks. They 
repaired it as well as tliey could, and leaving 
Mrs. Dwight with the horses, the two men took it 
down to their friends ; and by the end of the next 
day they were all safely across. 

Resuming their march, after proceeding about 
twenty miles they approach a Creek town, known as 
the Hickory Ground, at the present town of We- 
tumpka. Colonel McGillivray, the celebrated Creek 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 225 

ruler, has a residence there, but is absent. Afraid 
to enter the village, the trembling loyalists send in 
three deputies to explain their condition and ask 
relief. The ambassadors ride into the Indian town, 
along the path, amongst squaws hoeing corn, and 
between pleasant cabins, and lazy warriors, basking 
in the sun. But at the sight of strangers the fierce 
savages quickly gather about them in a dissatisfied 
and increasingly angry crowd, for they see that the 
saddles are not Spanish, like those of their allies, but 
English, like those of their unscrupulous and bitter 
foes, the Georgians. The wretched deputies in vain 
set forth the truth, tliat they are royalists, friends of 
King George and of the Creek nation ; in vain 
explain whence and why they have come, and urge 
their helpless state, the misery of their company, and 
their frank and confiding application. The savages 
converse and argue together ; their tones grow fero- 
cious, their eyes begin to gleam with fury, and they 
handle their weapons. The unhappy men see death 
close before them ; they and their hapless friends will 
end their long desperate journey under the toma- 
hawks and knives of these fierce Indians. 

A negro rides up, and with some seeming authority 
demands the cause of the excitement. It is Paro, 
body-servant to Col. McGillivray, this moment re- 
turned from a journey. The Indians answer that 
these are some Georgians whom they propose to 

10* 



226 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

kill. But the deputies quickly tell liim tlieir sad and 
truthful stoiy, and he believes it, and tries to con- 
vince the warriors. But though he adds violent 
rej)roaches to persuasions and arguments, they simply 
answer that all the company must die. An ignorant 
but fair-minded warrior, now bethinking himself of 
the strange custom — which he takes it for granted is 
universal among all the whites — of putting talk on 
paper, all at once calls out — for he would be just, 
and appeals to the records — " If you tell the truth, 
make the paper talk !" The quick-witted negro 
takes a hint from their demand and asks them for a 
journal of their trip. They kej^t none. Then have 
they any paper with writing on it ? They search in 
terror. At last, one of them finds an old letter in his 
pocket. Paro tells him what to do, and how ; and 
accordingly he reads as if from the letter, in a slow 
and solemn manner — it may be believed he would 
not lack earnestness — a full and detailed account of 
their journey, and of its causes, Paro interpreting 
with much sj)irit and many gestures. As the reader 
proceeds, the wild faces of his audience soften and 
light up, and putting aside their weapons, they all 
come up to the deputies, at the end of the account, 
shake hands all round, welcome them to the town, 
and presently bringing in the whole company, furnish 
them good lodging and bounteous entertainment. 
After abundant rest and refreshment, the ]>arty 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 227 

proceeded eastward, separating into two divisions. 
One reached Savannah, and the other was taken bj 
the whigs, though soon released. During the whole 
of this terrible journey of one hundred and forty -nine 
days from Is^atchez, not one of the party lost his 
life. 

The fatigues and dangers of the way, however, had 
undermined the health of some of the travellers ; and 
two daughters of Gen. Lyman died after reaching 
Savannah. Three of their brothers were also mem- 
bers of the expedition; of whom, when the British 
left Georgia, one went to JSTova Scotia, one to 'New 
York, and one to ISTew Providence in the island of 
ISTassau. It is said that all these sons died of broken 
hearts ; and as Dr. Dwight observes, in his account 
of General Lyman's misfortunes, this may well be 
termed " the Unhappy Family ;" so long and uninter- 
rupted was the series of crushing misfortunes which 
bore them, one after another, down into obscure 
graves. 

Li western Pennsylvania had settled, in the early 
part of the century, a stout Englishman and his wife, 
whose lands had increased, and his children had mul- 
tiplied around his board. To him Avas born, in 1735, 
his son Daniel Boone. The boy, a hunter by birth 
and nature, early became a daring and skillful woods- 
man, strong, fleet and active, and unrivalled in the 
use of the rifle. He was but eigliteen when his father 



228 



removed to the upper country on the Yadkin, among 
the mountains in the west of IN'orth Carolina ; rejoicing 
in the wild and noble scenery, the primeval forest, 
the richness of the virgin soil and the abounding game. 
Here Boone married, while yet young, and lived for 
some time, hunting and farming ; loving and beloved 
by wife and children ; but yet essentially a wild and 
solitary man, spending his happiest hours alone in the 
woods, hunting sometimes, and often enjoying with a 
strange delight, for a man so rude and unlettered, the 
numberless beauties of the mountain and river land- 
scapes. 

In the spring of 1769 he had already become un- 
easy at the approach of other men ; for other settlers 
Avere planting themselves along the strean:is, other 
hunters w^ere wandering in the woods ; so he medi- 
tates an expedition into the unknown forest world 
beyond the mountains. The handles of the plough 
are dropped in the furrow, he hastens to his house, 
gathers his rifle and accoutrements, and starts in com- 
pany with an old Indian trader and hunter named 
Finlay, and four other men. They commence their 
journey on the 1st of May, 1760. A long, toilsome 
way they follow for six weeks. Crossing the Alle- 
ghany, the iron mountain, to the Cumberland Pass, 
they come out upon the headwaters of the Kanawha, 
and now have reached the goodly land. And truly, is 
it not an Eden ? During a sojourn of six and a half 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 229 

months, feasting his eyes with the glories which he 
can enjoy there without end — herds of buffalo which 
no man can number, beautiful springs gushing from 
every hill-side, wide, wealthy savannas, broad tree- 
fringed rivers, noble forests, and all the unimaginable, 
solitary splendors of a rich land, witJiout human inha- 
bitant. At the expiration of this time, Boone and 
William Stewart are taken captive by the Indians. 
The remainder of the company are frightened, and 
hurry homeward. Boone and his companion remain 
in the hands of their captors, pretending quiet satis- 
faction, for a week ; then easily escape. I^ot a great 
while thereafter, William Stewart is shot by the In- 
dians ; and now Daniel Boone remains alone. The 
spring of the year comes to this lonely hunter, wan- 
dering here through all these wide and pleasant lands 
of forest and prairie and canebrake, which the Indians 
call "Tlie Dark and Bloody Ground." Now he is 
joined by his brother. Squire Boone, a man who 
shares many peculiarities with himself. For a year and 
a half longer do these intrepid men remain in Ken- 
tucky, when Squire Boone returns to the settlements 
for a fresh supply of powder and lead, while Daniel 
remains alone in the wilderness, surrounded by savage 
foes seeking his trail ; yet unfearing and defiant. They 
go in groups ; he without an associate, without even 
a dog to bear him company. This strange safety was 
assured by a weed — a thistle — which grew in abund- 



230 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ance tlirougliout Kentucky, as if Providence had 
spread a carpet of safety over the land for this solitary 
Wcinderer. On this humble herb the foot of the tra- 
veller leaves a peculiar impress, which remains long 
and distinctly ; and the Indians, the lords of the soil, 
numerous and bold, tread carelessly as they rove 
across their hereditary forests and prairies, and leave 
patent to the trained unerring eye of the solitary 
white man the record of their number and their jour- 
ney ; while he, avoiding the tell-tale herb, moves un- 
known and safe from one hunting-ground to another. 
Thus, to his eyes, the ground is covered as if with a 
sheet of snow, bearing the impression of his enemies' 
trails ; while, for their eyes, no snow is on the ground, 
and his step has left no trace. Thus wanders this one 
solitary Anglo-Saxon, glad at heart in the revelation 
of a new apocalypse of earthly beauty ; a man untaught 
in books and erudition, but whose eyes often overflow 
w4th happy, grateful tears as he looks abroad upon 
the loveliness of nature, tasting the sweetest and pro- 
foundest things of God ; reading, with clear, keen 
eye, the open secret which nature reveals to all 
her children, and pursuing his way of peril to find it 
a way of delight and joy. Having fully explored the 
country in company with his brother, he returns to 
the settlements. The tidings he brings are hailed 
with rapture by the people ; but two years are allowed 
to pass before active measures are taken to assume 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 231 

the occupancy of the new soil. At length Boone de- 
parts with his family, having first shaken hands with 
all his neighbors twice round ; for, notwithstanding 
his silent ways, he is much beloved, because he never 
omitted an o]3portunity to do a kindly office to his 
brother man, at whatever inconvenience to himself. 

With five more families he sets out, with wife and 
children; is joined, in Powell's Yalley, by forty well- 
armed men ; and advances prosperously, until just as 
the last mountain pass is before them. Even as they 
are ascending the rugged way, the rear of the party 
is attacked by the Indians, and at the first fire, Boone's 
oldest son, a promising youth of about twenty, falls — 
the second victim. William Stewart was the first ; and 
they two are the precious first-fruits of that fearful 
hecatomb offered so cheerfully by those dauntless 
and uncompromising men, the heroic forefathers of 
the Mississippi Yalley. 

After the Indians are vanquished and driven from 
their coverts, a halt is called ; and though the parley 
which ensues is attended only by the men, the women 
and children are represented. The company deter- 
mine to fall back upon Powell's Yalley. Here they 
take up a position, put themselves in a defensive atti- 
tude, and month after month is passed av\^ay in hunt- 
ing or dreaming. Boone si Is one day in the porch of 
his humble cabin, when down the valley comes, all 
foaming with his haste, an express messenger from 



232 PIONEERS, PfiEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Yirginia, looking for 
Daniel Boone. This is in 1774. He is wanted by 
Lord Dunmore to go westward four hundred miles, 
to the falls on the Ohio River, at what is now Louis- 
ville, to bear tidings to a party of surveyors and land 
jobbers there, that the Indians are about to break in- 
to hostility ; and then safely to convoy these men home 
again. One furtive glance at Mrs. Boone, who nods 
assent, and his rifle is grasj^ed, and Daniel, with a 
quiet and easy heart, starts alone upon his wild and 
terrible journey. He reaches the Falls, surprises the 
surveyors and speculators, and brings them back in 
safety, performing the journey of 800 miles in six 
weeks ; and receives not only the thanks of the men 
thus rescued from the clutches of tlie savages, but 
also of the lordly Governor of Yirginia. 

And now it is not needful for me to stop to detail 
the peculiar transactions of Logan's War, or that 
other war of Lord Dunmore, whose scene was the 
western border in 1774. The Indians, wronged and 
outraged by the conduct of the squatter settlers, who 
had grasped their land without remunerating them, 
had again risen ; but after a brief cam2)aign, were 
overcome, and forced to yield their lands to the 
whites ; and Lord Dunmore hastened back to uphold 
and maintain the tottering authority of the British 
Crown within the territories of Yiro^inia. 

And now, in 1774, there has penetrated the interior 



OF THE mssissippi. 233 

of Kentucky another lone hunter, James Harrod. 
James Logan also has come. Daniel Boone is en- 
gaged as superintendent by one Col. Henderson, 
who purposes to be a great land-jobber in the west ; 
a man who taught himself to read and write after at- 
taining adult years, and who began life in the province 
of Carolina. He was a man of strong sense, and of 
much practical skill and enterprise. He ran for and 
obtained the lofty office of constable, next became a 
magistrate, and afterward lived to reach the bench 
of the Supreme Court of K"orth Carolina. He was 
not a cross-grained ascetic, not a studious scholar, but 
a free, bold, dashing, spirited fellow, who had made 
his money easily, and spent it yet more easily — gene- 
rous and jovial to all, and exj)ending in good living 
and speculation all that he earned. At this time he 
was bankrupt ; and casting his eye about the world 
to see from what quarter he could gather new sup- 
plies, he thought of western lands. He would found 
an empire in the "West. He makes a treaty with the 
Cherokees for some land which did not belong to 
them ; but that is a small matter ; his title is as good 
as that of the British government to American lands. 
He buys the vast region of country lying between the 
Kanawha and Cherokee rivers. Here he proposes to 
establish the Republic of Transylvania ; and Boone is 
sent out as a pioneer, to found the first settlement. 
And now, in conjunction with the settlements of 



234 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Harrod and Logan, Boonesborougli is established, and 
into this new home comes Mrs. Boone, with three 
other women. These were the pioneer women of the 
"West ; the women who, with their children, braved 
the perils of the way, the dangers of the forest, and 
the more fearful wiles of the bloodthirsty, insidious 
foes who lurk in every thicket, and ambuscade every 
ravine. 

As the war of the Eevolution broke out in the 
eastern colonies, the aristocratic ministry of England 
contrived a grand coujp Wetat^ to arm the Indian sa- 
vages against the western settlements ; that, having 
destroyed these, they might sweep eastward over the 
mountains. The colonists, thus attacked at once in 
front and rear, it was imagined must quickly suc- 
cumb ; and in truth, had it not been for these infant 
settlements in the land of the canebrake — these three 
little forts of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg and Lo- 
gansport — manned altogether by not more than one 
hundred fighting-men, which stood, a slender but im- 
pregnable breakwater, against the wild, tempestuous 
rush of the forest tribes of the !N'orthwest — there is 
reason for believing that the onset of those fierce war- 
riors might have turned the wavering balance of the 
war, and given the victory, in the bitter struggle of 
the Bevolution, to the British. 

But there is another life, less known than Daniel 
Boone's, but, if possible, still more hardily adventurous, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 235 

and certainly more closely characteristic of the men 
and times of which I am speaking. Let us follow it, 
and see w^hat were the deeds and the dangers of one 
whom we may well call tlie ideal man — the represen- 
tative man of ante-Revolutionary Kentucky. I mean 
the life of General Simon Kenton, the refugee, hunter, 
spy, horse-stealer, Indian-fighter, soldier and ofiicer ; 
and withal the perfect hero, true friend and brave 
protector of the scattered, imperilled outposts of civili- 
zation that scantily dotted the blood-stained forests 
of Kentucky. 

Simon Kenton was born in Fauquier County, Yir- 
ginia, in 1755. He was of the wild and insubordinate, 
but cool, adventurous and daring Scotch-Irish blood— 
his mother Scotch and his father Irish. The parents 
were so poor that the boy's education, to his lasting 
disadvantage in life, was quite neglected. In those 
wild days, and in the hardy, healthy life of the moun- 
tains, marriages were early made. Kenton was only 
about sixteen when he was in love ; and lost his sweet- 
heart, too, by the success of a preferred rival, his own 
most intimate friend, one Yeach, who was, for all 
that appears, as young as he. Desperate with disap- 
pointment, he recklessly, as the old song says, '' came 
to the wedding without any bidding," and finding the 
happy couple among their friends, seated on a bed, 
he seems to have quite lost his wits, and crazily and 
rudely thrust himself between them. Upon this, 



236 PIOJJEERS, PBEACHEES AND PEOPLE. 

Yeacli and his brothers pounced upon him, gave him 
a sound thrashing and turned him out of the house. 
But meeting Yeach alone in the woods, soon after- 
ward, Kenton intimating that he was still dissatisfied, 
they had a long and severe pitched battle, which 
ended in Kenton's thoroughly squaring accounts by 
beating his adversary to helplessness, and leaving 
him on the ground for dead. Frightened at his work, 
fearing the revenge of friends and the rude penalties 
of border law, his friend and his love both lost, a sud- 
den mighty sense of loneliness and hate for civilized 
life came upon him, and he fled to the mountains and 
the woods. Journeying by night, and hiding by day, 
he pushes westward, and in April, 1771, reaches Cheat 
Eiver ; works for hire until he earns a good rifle ; 
goes on to Fort Pitt ; engages himself to hunt for the 
garrison ; and forms a strong friendship with that Simon 
Girty who stands amidst the blood and flre of the 
fearful Indian wars of those times, a figure infernal 
with murder and treason, a renegade among the 
savages, and yet — as if to prove that the worst 
men are not all bad — more than once proving him- 
self an eminently faithful and unflinching protector 
of the very few to whom he felt gratitude or aftection. 
In the autumn of 1771, with two hunters named 
Yeager and Strader, the first of whom had excited 
his fancy with wonderful stories of the cane-lands of 
Kentucky, he went down the Ohio to find them. Not 



OF THE LHSSISSIPPI. 237 

succeeding, they returned to tlie woods of the great 
Kanawha, and hunted for a year and a half. In the 
spring of 1T73 the Indians, then becoming excited 
against the settlements, suddenly fired upon the 
three hunters while asleep in their camp, and killed 
Yeager ; Strader and Kenton fled into the woods naked, 
as they lay in their shirts only, without arms or food, 
and after wandering six days, torn, bleeding, and 
famished, so footsore that their last day's journey 
was but six miles, and so exhausted that on that 
same day they repeatedly lay down to die, they 
met som.e hunters, obtained food and clothes, and 
returned to a settlement. Kenton now went to work 
again, until he had obtained another rifle and 
hunter's outfit; accompanied a party searching for 
Capt. Bullitt, who had gone down the Ohio on a sur- 
veying expedition ; guided it, when unsuccessful, back 
to Yirginia; volunteered into Dunmore's army in 
1774, doing good service as a sj)y ; and being dis- 
charged in the fall, hunted on the Big Sandy that 
winter ; and the next summer made a second trip 
with a hunter named Williams, in search of the 
cane-lands of Kentucky, the glowing descriptions 
of his dead friend Yeager still dwelling in his 
mind. He discovered the long-wished-for cane by 
accident, not far from Maysville, in Mason County ; 
cleared some land and planted an acre of corn upon 
one of the richest and loveliest spots in Kentucky, 



238 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AXD PEOPLE 

and that season ate the first corn raised by a white 
man in the " Dark and Bloody Ground." 

Kenton now passed two or three years in a series 
of Jiunting and fighting adventures, ahnost mono- 
tonous for daring, and the extremest and most in- 
cessant peril from the savages, who haunted every 
covert of the beloved land into which the whites 
were crowding with increased rapidity. In the 
spring of 1777, while he was residing at Ilarrods- 
burg, ho was sent out with a small party, and 
driven back by the Indians. Sending his men into 
the station, he went off alone to warn the garrison of 
Boonesborough ; delayed entering until dark, to avoid 
the ambushes which the Indians frequently laid to 
shoot any persons coming or going ; and on his en- 
trance found the garrison bringing home the corpses 
of two men who had ignorantly or carelessly violated 
this prudent rule, and would have entered in day- 
light on the path he had followed. 

The Indians were now becoming more and more 
enraged at the occuj^ation of the beautiful land of 
Kentucky, and made incessant and furious incursions 
ito the settlements, closely besieging every station. 
Boonesborough was thus assaulted three times. 

Gen. George Kogers Clark, then a major, was in 
chief command of the settlements ; and with his con- 
currence six spies were appointed as a scouting force 
to watch the Indian frontier, two for each of the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 239 

three cliief stations, Boonesborougli, llaiTodsburg, 
and Logansport. Of tliese Kenton was chosen from 
B on esbo rough, by Boone himself. These fearless and 
wily woodsmen for a whole year gave timely notice 
of every attack, going out by twos, each party in 
its week ; except once. Kenton and two more were 
about going out of Boonesborougli to hunt, when two 
men at work outside the fort were fired at by 
Indians, and fled unhurt toward the fort. One 
escaped, but a bold warrior tomahawked the other 
within seventy yards of the fort, and was scalping 
him when Kenton shot him, and with his two com- 
panions sallied out upon the others of the savage 
party. Boone himself also quickly came out with 
ten men to support the attack. Kenton, turning 
round, saw an Indian aiming at Boone's men, and 
taking a quick aim, shot him. Boone now discovered 
that his company was cut off from the fort by a 
large force of Indians who had thrown themselves 
between. There was but one resource, a prompt 
attack. " Right about !" he cried, " fire ! charge !" 
and the little band sprang desperately at their red 
foes, whose first volley wounded seven of the four- 
teen, and breaking Boone's leg, brought him down. 
An Indian leaped on him, hatchet in hand, but the 
keen-eyed Kenton, cool as ice but quick as light- 
ning, shot him through the heart, lifted the old 
leader in his arms, and carried him into the fort. 



24:0 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

The rest all got in too, and after the gate was shut, 
Boone, a silent man, and much more chary of words 
and praises than a conqueror of crowns, sent for 
Kenton to give him his meed of praise for having 
saved his own life and killed three Indians without 
getting hurt himself; though the urgency of the 
case had prevented him from taking the scalp of any 
of them. This was the eulogy of the veteran Indian- 
fighter : 

" Well, Sam, you have behaved yourself like a 
man, to-day ; indeed you are a fine fellow !" 

Kenton continued in this little force of spies until 
June of the next year, when he accompanied Gen. 
Clarke's remarkable expedition against Kaskaskia 
and Yincennes ; and at his return, joined Boone, who 
was about marching against an Indian town on Point 
Creek, with nineteen men. He was in advance of 
the party when he heard loud laughter in the woods, 
and had barely time to " tree," when a pony 
approached, carrying two Indians, one facing the tail 
and the other the head, and in high spirits. Instantly 
firing, Kenton's bullet killed one and dangerously 
wound the other. Springing fortli to scalp them, 
about forty savages attacked him, and he commenced 
dodging about among the trees, feeling exceedingly 
hurried and very unsafe imtil Boone's force came up, 
charged furiously, and drove the enemy. But having 
learned that a large war-party had gone out against 



OF THE MISSISSIPPL 241 

Kis own station, Boone now turned short round, and 
hastened homeward. Kenton, and a fellow-woods- 
man named Montgomery, however, remained, lay 
within rifle shot of the Indian town two days, stole 
each a good horse, and rode into Boonesborough the 
day after the Indians, who had been besieging it, had 
disappeared. 

A few weeks afterward they set off to steal more 
horses, taking one Clarke with them. They secured 
seven near Chillicothe, and got away ; the Indians, 
however, being close behind. Eeaching the Ohio, 
the three men tried in vain to drive their prizes across 
the river, roughened under a high wind. After 
delaying, with the most astounding recklessness, for 
a'lmost a day, waiting for a calm, they decided once 
to leave four of their beasts and ride home on the 
other three. While trying to catch them again (hav- 
ing changed their minds), the Indians came up, shot 
Montgomery and took Kenton prisoner — even then 
only in consequence of the very extremest folly on his 
part, in turning back to get a shot at them* Clarke 
alone, who fled as fast as possible, escaped. 

The Indians, themselves most thorv-^nghgoing of- 
fenders in the same line,- professed the most violent 
indignation at Kenton's offence, and reproached him 
for a " boss steal," beat him until they could not beat 
him longer, and then secured him for the night, flat 
on the ground, his legs stretched out and tied tight 

11 



242 PIONEERS, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

to two saplings, liis arms lashed at length to a strong- 
pole tied across his breast, and a stout thong, so tight 
as barely to permit him to breathe, strained back to 
a stake. He remained a captive eight months, ran 
the gauntlet eight times, was once nearly killed by a 
blow from an axe, and was three times tied to a stake 
to be burnt, being twice saved by the renegade Si- 
mon Girty, his early friend — who, in this, showed 
himself caj^able of the strongest attachment and the 
most energetic and disinterested efforts for another — 
and once by Logan, the Mingo chief, who induced a 
Canadian trader to buy him. His owner finally took 
him to Detroit, where he remained, laboring for 
small wages, until the summer of 1779. 

Being in the flower of his youth — he was now 
twenty-four — an exceedingly handsome man, tall, 
straight and graceful, dignified and manly in deport- 
ment and speech, already famous for his bravery and 
skill in Indian warfare, with a soft and pleasant voice, 
and alwajs a favorite with females, he was so fortu- 
nate as to excite a deep interest in the bosom of a 
Mrs. Harvey, wife of an English trader. Conceiving 
hopes of escape by her means, he intrusted her, after 
long doubt, and with great circumspection, with his 
scheme. After a little hesitation she consented to 
aid him, and procured and concealed for him and the 
two fellow-prisoners with whom he proposed to es- 
cape, provisions and ammunition. During a grand 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 243 

drunken frolic of tlie Indians, she also stole for tliem 
three good rifles, and on the 3d June, 1779, they set 
out, and reached Louisville after thirty-three days of 
great hardship. 

After resting a little while, he went alone through 
the forest to visit Gen. Clark, at Yincennes; then 
returned to Harrodsburg; and the next spring accom- 
panied Clark on his expedition against the Indian 
towns, commanding a company ; and, being now the 
best woodsman and forest spy in the western country, 
he was the principal guide to the expedition. During 
two years after the return of these troops, Kenton 
was occupied, as usual, in spying, hunting, or sur- 
veying; and in the autumn of 1782, after eleven years 
of exile and remorse for supposed murder, he learned 
at the same time that his father was yet alive, and 
that Yeach was not dead, but living and well. Hith- 
erto, since his flight, he had always been known as 
Simon Butler ; but now he gladly resumed his own 
name, and with the weight of shame, banishment and 
guilt removed from his mind, "felt like a new man." 

In this same autumn, Kenton again commanded a 
company and acted as guide for the army on Clark's 
second expedition against the Indian towns. After 
his return, he made a clearing on one of the many 
tracts of valuable land of which he had become the 
owner, and a year afterward, having raised a good 
crop of corn, returned home, visiting his friends, m'Iio 



244 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

had supposed him dead, and Mr. and Mrs. Yeach, 
who received him without any remains of rancor for 
his ancient misdoings. He took his father with liim 
on his return, but the old man died and was buried 
on the way. 

During the subsequent years, Kenton, now at the 
head of a thriving frontier settlement and a large land- 
owner, led a company in two more expeditions into 
the Indian country, and in 1793, with a party, ambus- 
caded a troop of savages at their crossing-place on 
the Ohio, and, as they came up on their return, killed 
six and drove the rest away. This was the last in- 
cursion they ever made into Kentucky. The whites 
were now too strong for them, and, discouraged and 
beaten, they confined themselves within the territories 
north of the Ohio. All this time — that is, from about 
1Y84: until the end of the century — Kenton was the 
foremost man on the Kentucky frontier. His landed 
property was large — ^he even gave away at one time 
one thousand acres of land, upon which was founded 
the town of Washington — and his noble and kindly 
character, as well as his preeminent skill and valor 
as a woodsman and forest soldier, rendered him be- 
loved and esteemed by all. 

After the expedition of Wayne had given a final 
blow to the power of the Indians, and the infant com- 
monwealth of Kentucky was beginning to stride for- 
ward toward wealth and power with tlie long, rapid 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 245 

steps of the young giant States of the West, a sad 
series of reverses, disgraceful to tlie State for which 
he had fought so bravely, overtook Kenton. True as 
steel, and confiding and unsuspicious to a degree al- 
most incredible and quite unknown except as the 
companion quality of such crystal honesty and child- 
like sincerity as his, and a rude and imlettered man 
withal, what should the heroic wanderer of the woods 
know of the details of legal formularies ? How could 
he, spending thirty years in incessant, exhausting 
perils and combats, exposed to a thousand deaths and 
to tortures unutterable, worse than death, in the long 
defence of tbe infant settlements of Kentucky — how 
could he dream that any one would rob him of the 
land he had bought with his blood — that the com- 
monwealth he had done so much to establish would 
suffer him to be beggared within her own limits by 
speculating knaves, engineering him out of his right- 
ful property by the shrewd villainies of laws mis- 
applied, and principles of justice perverted into in- 
struments of oppression ? But those who rushed so 
rapidly into Kentucky, after her borders were freed 
from the Indians, gave small heed to the men who 
had secured them peace. Kenton, like Boone and 
so many more of the pioneers of the forest, had igno- 
rantly omitted one and another form, or entry, or 
item of description, in the proceedings taken to 
secure the lands selected in so much peril, and de- 



24:6 

served by sucli inexpressible hardships and toils. One 
knave after another brought suit, founded on subse- 
quent and more formal proceedings, for clearing 
woodland or prairie. Kenton's estate was wrenched 
piece-meal from him ; liis body was taken for debt, 
on covenants in the deeds to those very lands which 
lie had substantially given away ; and he was im- 
prisoned for a year on the very spot where he had 
planted the first corn raised by a white man in the 
north of Kentucky, and had afterward built his fron- 
tier station. 

Keduced almost to beggary, he moved out of his 
ungrateful adopted State in 1802, and settled at Ilr- 
bana, now no longer young, and with the cheerless 
prospect of an old age of penury among strangers. 
In 1805, he was cliosen brigadier-general in the Ohio 
militia. Five years afterward, being at a camp- 
meeting, under the influence of the rude but effective 
preaching of a strong, simple-hearted man of God, 
he became convicted of sin, and would fain rancre 
himself within the church of God. With a natural 
reluctance to expose his spiritual moods and exercises 
to the observation of others, he requested a minister 
present to accompany him into the woods and pray 
with him, saying at the same time, " But don't make 
a noise about it!" The plain and sincere clergyman 
knelt down with the old frontiersman and wrestled 
with God in prayer for him ; restraining his fervor 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 24:7 

however, as required. And now the powerful ap- 
peals and sympathies of the wise, though homely, 
preacher, and the influences of Him that answereth 
prayer, worked mightily within the honest, simple 
soul of the old man ; and in a great whirlwind of 
fears and terrors, and mingled joy and pain, in the 
new feelings and perceptions that break in upon his 
soul, he rises almost distracted and hastens back 
toward the crowded meeting, crying aloud in his 
trouble, and borne far beyond any regard to human 
criticism or human presence ; while the quaint old 
preacher, with that wonderful mingling of profound 
admonition ^nd comicality, so strangely characteristic 
of his class, and so eminently effective upon their 
peculiar people, halloed after him, retorting his late 
request, — " Look here ; don't make a noise about it!" 
But Kenton found peace in believing, and became a 
sincere member of the Methodist church. 

In 1813, when Shelby and the Kentucky volun- 
teers so bravely marched to the aid of Harrison, 
against the banded tribes of the ITorthwest, Kenton 
accompanied the army, and was present as a privi- 
leged member of Gov. Shelby's family, at the battle 
of the Thames, his last fight. Eeturning home, he 
lived on in obscure poverty, in his hut in the woods, 
until 1820, when he removed to near the head of 
Mad Kiver, in Logan County; within sight of 
Wapatomika, where, forty-two years before, the In- 



248 PIONEERS, PEEACHER3 AND PEOPLE 

dians had tied liim to the stake to burn liim to 
death. 

In this distant spot he was still plagued with law- 
suits and executions in Kentucky ; and in 1824, 
being seventy years old, in rags, and on a wretched 
horse, he journeyed to Frankfort, to petition the 
State of Kentucky to release from forfeiture for taxes 
some poor tracts of mountain land still left to him. 
Rambling up and down the city, which had grown 
up where he had wandered in primeval woods, a 
spectacle to boys and a stranger to men, he was 
recognized by an old friend or acquaintance, well 
clothed and hospitably entertained. And soon, when 
the news went out that General Simon Kenton was 
in the town, the fame that such noble and ancient 
men get in their old age, as if they were dead, 
gathered many to see the renowned hunter and 
warrior of two generations back. They carried the 
old man to the capitol, placed him in the sj)eaker's 
chair, and introduced him to a great multitude of 
men, after our wonderful American fashion which 
thus gratifies the curiosity of a multitude under the 
shallow pretence of doing homage to one. And the 
simple-hearted old man, believing in every word and 
every smile — and indeed, doubtless no small share of 
that inexpensive admiration was sincere enough as 
far as it went — was wondrously lifted up, and was 
afterward wont to say, that that was the proudest 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 249 

day of his life. His petition was granted, however, 
at once. Judge Burnet and Governor Yance, of 
Ohio, then in Congress, a little afterward also ob- 
tained for him a pension of twenty dollars a month, 
which preserved him for the rest of his life from 
extreme want. Living twelve years longer, loved 
and respected by all who knew him, quiet and ob- 
scure, Simon Kenton died in April, 1836 — in fullness 
of years, for he was eighty-one. 

I have ventured upon all this detail, and have 
followed the life of this famous old pioneer so far be- 
yond the period described by the title of this lecture, 
because that life is such a full and vivid picture — 
such a complete epitome and type — of a life which 
was led by so many of those who dwelt in the cabin 
homes of the wilderness in that wild and perilous 
period. 'Nor do my contracted limits suffice for 
more than a swift and shadowy outline of the story. 
The multiplied details of Kenton's life of hardships, 
enterprise, battle, peril and escape, would fill vol- 
umes. And the full history of all the startling 
dangers, the bold and wild exploits, the desperate 
escapes, the fearful miseries of those times, would 
make a library of strangest adventure. 



11* 



Lecture VI. 

THE 

C^Bi:iSr HOMES 

OF THE "^YILDERNESS 

DUEING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 



351 



CABIN" HOMES OF THE WILDERNESS, 

DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

The wilderness hath a schooling all its own, and 
its tuition is not one destitute of profit or compensa- 
tion. I would not undervalue the worth of litera- 
ture, the acquisition of science, or the training im- 
parted in colleges. Perhaps few men have paid a 
higher price for these. And yet there is a majesty, a 
splendor, in a lonely forest, a boundless prairie, in 
the great primeval forms of nature while they are 
yet untainted and undesecrated by the play of human 
passions and human appetites, fresh as a virgin 
world from the hand of the Creator, which imparts 
to the human soul a grandeur and nobility of charac- 
ter rarely acquired in the pursuits of trade or com- 
merce, or in the common, fixed and plodding occupa- 
tions of every-day life. A peculiar muscularity is 
given to the form, a vigor to the step, a freshness to 
the thought ; the will is untrammelled, scarcely even 
limited by the thought of any impossibility ; self- 
reliance is developed to the very highest point ; an 
independence of action and of being that leans only 
on the Everlasting arms that are around and under- 

253 



254: PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

iieath us all. Here, in the spring or early summer, 
when the grove perfumes the atmosphere, and loads 
it as with fragrance from on high — when the prairie 
stretches its illimitable ocean-like surface before the 
eje — when the tall and rustling grass is interspersed 
and interwoven with flowers of a thousand hues and 
a thousand aromas — here, where the buffalo roams at 
his own wild will, and the deer stalks proudly on, 
clad in his red summer garment — where the stately 
elk, with his spreading antlers, seems the monarch of 
the forest, and where the low growl of the bear is 
heard ever and anon, and at nightfall comes upon the 
breeze the howl of a pack of wolves from the far dis- 
tance — here, where man is surrounded by nature in 
her simplest, and sternest, and most inviting forms, 
does he cultivate to the very utmost all the vast self- 
supporting powers of humanity; his gun, his own 
sagacity, an unerring and unblenching eye, an un- 
quivering muscle, his only suj^ports this side of 
Providence. If he is wanting to himself in the wil- 
derness, he is lost indeed. 

Such a wilderness as this was the boundless West 
at the commencement of our Revolution. Here was 
the great normal school for western character, and 
admirably were the pupils that came to receive the 
instruction of this university qualified to enter it. 
Men for the most part destitute of the culture of the 
schools, unblessed with the tuition of art, or science. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 255 

or literature, accustomed to battle with the storm in 
the wild mountains and wilder woods of the western 
skirts of the colonies, trained in the fierce sports of 
the border, now rush like a tide down the western 
slopes of the Alleghany Mountains, to take possession 
of these illimitable and magnificent regions ; to trans- 
fer them from the sway of barbarism and solitude, 
and transform them into busy and peopled haunts of 
living and working men. These new^-comers were 
men strong of frame, compact and muscular, Hercu- 
lean of stature, of dauntless courage, of determina- 
tion incapable of discouragement or fear, carrying 
their lives in their hands, ready, if necessary, to crim- 
son the soil of that new world with their heart's 
blood. Tliere is hardly a more striking commentary 
upon, or interpretation of, the pristine radical ele- 
ments of Anglo-Saxon character in the whole range 
of the records of our race, than is to be found in the 
history of its occupancy of Kentucky and the Nortli- 
western Territory. 

These men thus came to take possession just at the 
period when tlie Revolutionary struggle was begin- 
ning ; when the whole firmament of the political sky 
of America was overcast and darkened by lowering 
and thunderous clouds ; when the might of the mo- 
ther country was lifting itself in all its majesty to 
chastise the rebellious colonies ; when w^hite men in 
red coats, with epaulettes upon their shoulders and 



256 PIONEERS, PKEACHEBS AND PEOPLE 

commissions from the third George in their j)oekets 
— men who claimed and acknowledged the ties of 
human kindred with the colonists upon this side the 
water — were absolutely suborning the red savages of 
the West to deeds of unparalleled cruelty and blood- 
thirstiness ; when these servants of the third George 
actually set a price upon the scalps of their bre- 
thren, and not only this, but upon the scalps of 
women and children of Anglo-Saxon blood. Col. 
Hamilton, commandant at Detroit, acting, as he af- 
firmed, under the authoritj^, the advice and consent, 
of the government of England, absolutely offered a 
price for the scalps of women and children, torn from 
their bleeding skulls by the ruthless savages of the 
border. Thenceforth and forever, as long as that 
man's name finds a place in history, let him be called 
by the homely but terrible name given him by the 
heroic General Clark, who took him prisoner at Yin- 
cennes, " Hamilton the hair-buyer." 

And now, when to the dangers of the wild, dark 
woods, the perils of those lurking savages, to whom 
the perpetration of the most treacherous murders, 
and of the most horrible cruelties, is as the breath of 
their nostrils, are added the intensifications and re- 
inforcements of that gloomy time; when the wild 
invading fury of the red men, already savage and 
devastating enough, was stimulated by these inhuman 
promises of gain, and by the prospect of immediate 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 257 

and powerful foreign aid ; when tlie forces of Eng- 
land were mustering all along the borders of the 
lakes ; when the British commanders and agents were 
subsidizing, and enrolling and equipping, the half- 
savage Canadians of Montreal and Detroit, and the 
savages of so many boundless forests from Niagara 
to distant Chicago, from the headwaters of the Sus- 
quehanna and the great Council House of Onondaga 
to the distant shores of Huron and Superior ; when 
this furious and redoubled tide of desolation and 
slaughter was gathering, to be poured out upon these 
infant and seemingly helpless settlements of the West, 
were not these pioneers, who, daring to take tlieir 
lives in their hands — jeR, and the lives of their wives 
and young children — and trusting in nothing besides 
their God, except their woodcraft and their rifles, 
plunged far beyond the mountain boundaries of 
civilization into that blood-stained borderland ; and 
who maintained and protected the infant settlements 
so long, so well, against such overwhelming and des- 
perate odds — were not these of heroic mold, of even 
gigantic resolution and valor, and most justly entitled 
to our admiration and our love ? 

Such were Boone, Kenton, Logan, Harrod, Callo- 
way, McGary, Todd, and many more than I can even 
name here ; all the leading settlers of Kentucky. In 
the preceding lecture were presented sketches of one 
or two lives among them, in the account of which I 



258 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

somewhat transgressed the limits of the period strictly 
under consideration, but no further than was neces- 
sary to complete the picture of the men, which is that 
of the times. The present lecture is in its nature 
necessarily a continuation of that ; and in it I shall 
aim to aiford such glimpses of some of the more im- 
portant of the varied movements and adventures 
which took place in the great valley during the Revo- 
lution, as may enable the student to gain a broad and 
connected view of the complexion and progress of 
this stirring chapter in our history. 

Perhaps almost enough has already been said for 
my purpose, so far as regards the territory of Ken- 
tucky. But it will not be inapj)ropriate to afford the 
means of a still fuller apprehension of the perils 
and the bravery of the times, by a brief account of 
some of its innumerable adventures. 

In the year 1Y76 there were but about one hun 
dred fighting men in Kentucky. Of these from thirty 
to fifty were usually in garrison at Boonesborough, or 
absent on expeditions thence. 

Let me delay a moment to describe this famous old 
fort, whose site is now occupied by an obscure and 
decaying village of the same name. Boonesborough 
was the first fort built in Kentucky, and was estab- 
lished by Daniel Boone in 1775. It stood in a small 
cleared space on the bank of the Kentucky River ; 
and occupied a parallelogram about two hundred 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 259 

and sixty by one hundred and fifty feet, one 
angle resting on the river bank. Its rude but 
sufficient fortifications consisted of two cabins on a 
side, with a gate between, one at each end, and at 
the corners block-houses, which were merely houses 
built with larger logs than a common cabin, and 
more carefully and closely constructed for defence. 
These cabins and block-houses were connected by 
high strong fences of large pickets or timbers driven 
close together into the ground. All the outer walls 
were loopholed for musketry ; and this wooden fort, 
that could not have resisted a six-pound field bat- 
tery, was to the children of the forest an impregnable 
stronghold, proved by many a desperate assault 
urged on by the bitter sorrow and anger they felt at 
each successive extension of the wliite man's hold on 
their favorite forests and savannas. 

One of the men employed on the work was killed 
a few days after the foundations were laid. The fort 
was incessantly beleaguered for years, and sustained 
three furious sieges by large bodies of Indians ; the 
last time in September, 177S, under the command 
of British officers. The settlement had grown so 
dense and spread so far by this time, that the sava- 
ges could no longer penetrate to the walls of the 
fort without leaving too many enemies in their 
rear. 

The following incident well illustrates the clangers 



260 



to wliicli the inhabitants of these little fortresses were 
daily exposed. 

Ojie fine summer afternoon, while the garrison was 
not dreaming of danger, some of the men lounging 
idly around the gate, or under the shadow of the 
stockade, were looking upon three girls, two of them 
daughters of Col. Kichard Calloway, the other of 
Daniel Boone ; the oldest fourteen years of age, the 
youngest nine or ten. The three girls were playing 
in a liglit canoe upon the placid bosom of the stream, 
dancing, and seemingly in danger of upsetting the 
light bark, but yet with practised skill preserving its 
balance ; their sweet and merry peals of laughter 
ringing far, far away, through the silent air. By the 
movements of the girls the canoe is driven further 
and further from the southern bank, imtil they are 
two-tliirds of the way across the stream ; when sud- 
denly, by an unseen yet irresistible impulse, it be- 
gins to move directly toward the northern shore, 
while the girls, surprised and wondering, look all 
around to see what may be the cause of the motion. 
Just as they are gaining the edge of the northern 
shore, the hand of a savage, and then his eye, fierce 
and glaring as that of a panther about to leap upon 
its prey, is seen within the shade of the bushes that 
fringe the stream, and as the boat is pulled within 
the same dark covert, they see other fierce eyeballs 
gleaming there, and strong arms inclose them. One 



OF THE MISSIS6IPPI. 261 

shriek from the poor affrighted girls, and their mouths 
are closed, and they are hurried off in the grasp of 
their Indian captors. That scream had been heard 
at the fort — the men had seen the motion of the boat, 
and quickly understood what had happened. 'No 
other canoes were in the neighborhood, and there 
was every reason to aj^prehend that other savages 
were still lurking in the bushes to pick off" any men 
who might seek to pursue. How they finally suc- 
ceeded in getting across, whether by swimming or 
tlie rescue of their canoe, is not known. Those in the 
fort waited the return of Boone, who was away on 
business. After several hours he returned ; but as it 
was near nightfall, he waited until morning, and by 
daylight set out in pursuit, with seven men. They 
had made a march of but a few miles when they 
reached a cane-brake where the savages had entered, 
and had taken such special pains to obliterate their 
traces that to follow the trail through the brake 
would consume time most critically precious, and 
might probably allow the Indians to escape. 

In this emergency, Boone strikes on a happy device, 
to " circumvent " the savages, to use a favorite word 
in western parlance — by making a detour around 
the entire brake, so as to strike the trail of the 
savages on the other side, wherever it might be. 
The plan is fortunately successful, and after travelling 
thirty miles with incredible speed, they find a bnf- 



262 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

falo path where the trail is quite fresh. Hastening 
ten miles further, they come suddenly upon the 
savages lying down or preparing a meal, and little 
thinking of danger, supposing that they had dis- 
tanced pursuit; but having the girls in close and 
careful custody. 

The two parties saw each other at the same time ; 
but the whites, firing a volley, charged so furiously 
upon the Indians, that they fled, leaving packs, am- 
munition, and weapons, except one empty shot-gun. 
The girls were uninjured, except by excessive fright 
and fatigue ; and their rescuers were so rejoiced at 
their recovery that, without pursuing the Indians 
further, they returned at once to the fort. 

In this same summer, one or two other feats were 
performed which merit our notice. Harrod's, Logan's 
and Boone's stations were this year attacked by 
Indians at the same time ; large numbers of them 
besieging each fort, and innumerable parties prowl- 
ing through the wilderness for the purpose of cutting 
off isolated settlers. Harrod's fort w^as attacked by 
a large body of Indians, who were determined to 
starve the garrison out. Their cornfields were des- 
troyed. The body of savages attacking them was 
some five or six hundred in numbe.r, while there 
were only about forty men inside the stockade. The 
woods for many miles were infested by the Indians, 
so that the crack of a white man's gun, if heard 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 263 

"within them, would have secured his instant death. 
^Nevertheless, a lad sixteen or seventeen years of age, 
named James Ray — several older hunters having 
tried in vain to supply the fort with provisions — 
volunteered his services. He was a married man, 
for they married early then; a son-in-law of Coh 
McGary. Taking the only horse of his father-in-law, 
all the others, of forty, having been stolen or des- 
troyed by the Indians — an old, worn-down beast — 
and leaving the stockade between midnight and day- 
light, taking his pathway in running brooks of water 
so as to leave no trace — thus the shrewd bold boy 
pursued his way for many miles, till far beyond the 
savages ; hunted the remainder of the day, slept a 
portion of the evening, and then came back as he 
had gone, his horse loaded with provisions. Thus for 
months, did this gallant young Yirginian maintain 
the fort by his single rifle. 

One other instance. All the stations, as I have 
said, were attacked ; and Logan's, containing fifteen 
men, shared the fate of the others. Early in the 
morning, a small guard of men are outside the gates, 
guarding a party of women milking the cows. This 
party is saluted by a sudden hail of bullets. Three of 
the men are killed ; the women all succeed in mak- 
ing their escape. The entire party rush into the 
gate of the fort, and enter in safety ; but the bodies 
of the three slain men and one poor wounded fellow 



264 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

are still outside tlie gate. The wounded man, Harri- 
son by name, runs a few steps and falls, in sight of 
both attackers and defenders. Here he lies, and un- 
less rescued must quickly be scalped. The Indians re- 
frain from firing upon him further, hoping to lure 
other of his friends to his help. The cries of the 
wounded man for aid, the frantic grief of his wife, 
seem to fall upon deaf ears. The men say : " Tliere 
are only twelve of us, and not one can be spared for 
less than a hundred red-skins, at least. 'No man's life 
can be given, and it will cost any man's life to at- 
tempt the rescue. But his wife, with terrible urgency, 
with cries and implorations of heartbreaking inten- 
sity, solicits all in turn. Col. Logan, the command- 
ant of the station, cannot withstand such entreaty 
and helplessness. He says, "Boys, are there none of 
you will go with me ?" John Martin rallies his cour- 
age, and says, " I am as ready to die now as I ever 
shall be ; I will go with you." The gates are oj)ened, 
and out they rush. A storm of leaden hail greets 
them. Martin finds he is not as ready to die as he 
thought, and runs back again. But out among the 
rifle balls rushes Logan ; bends over the wounded 
man ; raises him in his arms as if he were an infant ; 
and while the bullets are flying all around him, and 
more than one lock of his hair is cut off as by scissors, 
succeeds in entering the gates again, and delivers the 
wounded Harrison into the arms of liis rejoicing wife. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 265 

Still the Indians maintain the siege. There are 
only twelve men left ; their powder and ball are rnn- 
ning low; a fresh supply must be had, or all the hor- 
rors of Indian captivity must be the consequence. 
'None can be had nearer than at the settlements on 
the Holston Kiver, two hundred miles distant. Tliere 
was scarcely a chance that any messenger could pass 
the Indians, or that if he could, the fort could hold 
out until his return. Rash and desperate as the bold 
woodsmen were, they all hesitated to make this fear- 
ful experiment. Col. Logan himself, with that reflec- 
tive, resolute, deliberate bravery which carries the 
nobler sort of men, in time of need, so much further 
than the animal impulses of common hardihood, then 
volunteers, and selecting two companions, creeps out 
at night, and the three bold men noiselessly pass the 
Indian lines. Avoiding the usual road, he strikes off 
into the forest, pushes at almost superhuman speed 
over trackless mountain and valley, reaches Holston, 
secures the ammunition, puts it into the hands of 
his two companions, and himself preceding them, 
that his little garrison may the sooner receive the 
good news and strengthen their hearts, returns again, 
arriving in ten dsijs after his departure ; thus making 
this trip of four hundred miles through a rugged 
wilderness at the rate of forty miles a day, on foot, 
and with scarce aught to live upon. The powder and 

12 



266 PIONEEKS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ball is successfully brought in, and tlie Indians are 
driven away. 

About this same time, or just before it, there 
comes to Kentucky a young man. Born in 1752, 
when he enters Kentucky in 1775 he is twenty-three- 
years of age — a fine soldier-like fellow, who has been 
in Lord Dunmore's war, who commenced life as did 
most of the young men in Yirginia and thereabouts, 
as a surveyor, this being the surest highway to for- 
tune and distinction. He had been in Losran's war 
as a volunteer in the personal stafi' of Lord Dunmore, 
and now comes to Kentucky to see what manner of 
persons are there, and if the country be fit to settle 
in. Of stalwart bearing, noble in person, winning in 
manners, yet commanding, this man's courage and 
conduct through all the subsequent struggles of the 
pioneers of the West well entitle him to the lofty ap- 
pellation of the Washington of the "West. His name 
is George Rogers Clark, a man, singularly enough, 
as yet without a biography ; and yet, excepting 
Washington, Franklin, and a few others, there is 
not a man in all the annals of our country who so 
well deserves the tribute of the biographer, the pane- 
gyric of the historian, and the applause of his coun- 
trymen. He came to Kentucky, examined the con- 
dition of the province, returned to Yirginia in the 
fall, and came back to Kentucky in early spring for 
the purpose of making it his home, and taking part 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 267 

with his brothers of the frontier in their arduous de- 
fence of their lands and lives. He spent much of his 
time, alone, hunting or wandering through the woods ; 
visiting all the stations ; and easily making himself 
acquainted with the pioneers, from the smallest child- 
ren upward. And now, having acquainted himself 
with all the features of their life and needs, he recom- 
mends their calling a convention for the purpose of 
acquiring for themselves some political rights and 
position. He is appointed by this convention, with 
one Gabriel Jones, a representative or delegate to the 
legislature of Yirginia; and proceeding to Williams- 
burg, then the capital of Yirginia, finds the legisla- 
ture adjourned. He submits his credentials and 
claims to Governor Patrick Henry, who is lying ill ; 
urges upon the governor the pressing needs of Ken- 
tucky ; and claims the protection of Virginia's strong 
arm. Yirginia has nearly as much as she can do to 
care for herself; but the heart of Henry is touched by 
the representations of the chivalric young man, and 
he gives him a letter to the Representative Council 
of the State. These gentlemen say they can do no- 
thing for him, because the Iventuckians are not yet 
recognized by the legislature as citizens. They, how- 
ever say, " You shall have five hundred pounds of 
gunpowder for the Kentuckians, as a loan from 
friends, provided you will enter into personal recog- 
nizances for the value of the same." " Ko," he re- 



268 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

plies, "I cannot accept it. It is unjust to demand 
individual security from me, when I ask the powder 
for the service of the country." " But," they say, 
" it cannot be had otherwise." " Yery well," he 
says, " a country that is not worth defending is not 
worth claiming. Kentucky will take care of itself." 
Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Wye, and other members of the 
Council, much impressed by the lofty, decided tone 
of the young man, at last procure him an order foi 
the powder, to be delivered to him at Pittsburg. 
Heceiving it there, he embarks it in a keel-boat, and, 
with the little guard of seven men, they hasten down 
the river, hotly pursued by the Indians ; until, gain- 
ing the mouth of Limestone Creek, the site of Mays- 
ville, they ascend it a little way, scatter the precious 
cargo in various places of concealment in the woods, 
set their boat adrift, hasten to Harrod's station, and 
returning with a sufficient escort, bring the ammuni- 
tion in safety home, and supply the scattered forts 
with the means of defence against the now increasing- 
waves of Indian incursion from north of the Ohio. 
]^or is the powder the only good gift he brings. 
Against the strenuous opposition of Col. Campbell 
and the great land speculator Col. Henderson, he and 
his colleague succeeded in inducing the Virginia 
legislature to erect Kentucky into a county ; and thus 
he brought back to his adopted home its first politi- 
cal organization, entitling it to representation in tlio 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 260 

Yirginia Assembly, and to the benefits of a regular 
judicial and military establisliment. 

And now is in full activity that fearful torrent of 
savage invasion which surged so furiously in npon 
the scattered stations and settlements of Kentucky 
during the revolutionary years. British soldiers, 
French Canadians, Indian warriors, either in separate 
or allied hosts, beleaguer the rude log forts, haunt 
the settlements, waylay hunter and woodsman, peace- 
ful laborer, and innocent child. One after another, 
the best and bravest of the Kentuckians are picked off 
by the lurking foe ; blood flows like water ; and this 
infernal league of pretended Christians with savages 
little less than fiends in ferocity and cruelty, seems 
likely to waste away the sparse and feeble white set- 
tlements, by a slow and bloody but sure process of 
exhaustion. For a year and more, George Kogers 
Clark ranges the woods, commonly alone in the 
midst of all the war and all the danger, keenly 
enjoying a long series of desperate adventures, and 
participating in many hardy frontier fights, of which 
no detailed record remains. But his profound and 
penetrating genius soon awoke to the important 
truth — which the Yirginian authorities had not ap- 
prehended — that the true field for opposing this 
bitter, cruel contest, was not so much within the 
devastated fields and haunted forests of bleeding 
Kentucky, as afar within the distant forests of the 



270 PIONEEES, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

[N'orth ; at the great Indian towns where the warriors 
recruited their forces, where their squaws labored 
and their children played ; and still more, at the 
British posts of Detroit, Yincenncs and Ivaskaskia, 
the unfailing fountain of succor to the tribes ; where 
arms and clothing and gay ornaments were sold by 
British officers with w^hite skins, but hearts black 
and vile with inhuman, supcrsavage ferocity, to the 
red warriors for scal23s ; or given freely away to them, 
if only they would earn them by a foray in the 
American settlements. 

Clark resolves to attack these posts, profoundly 
convinced that thus he will strike a fatal stroke at 
the heart of the war; aud in 1TT7, he already sends 
two spies to examine the gronnd, whose report of the 
activity and efficiency of the English garrisons in 
maintaining the savage war stimulate his resolve 
still more. In December of the same year, he lays 
before Governor Henry the plan of a bold, sudden 
and secret blow at the enemy, which that officer and 
his council quickly approve. With two sets of in- 
structions, a public one authorizing him to go and 
defend Kentucky, and a secret one directing him to 
organize a force and take Kaskaskia, he returns, 
raises four companies instead of the authorized num- 
ber of seven — for the women will not let so many 
men leave their homes nndefended — then sifts these, 
after the fashion of Gideon, until he has a hundred 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 271 

and fiftj-tliree men ; and with a military chest con- 
taining twelve hundred pounds in depreciated paper 
money, and reinforcing this small amount by a 
bonntj' of three hundred acres of land for each sol- 
dier, he sets out. They descend the Ohio until 
within forty miles of its mouth, disembark, sink their 
boats to hide them, and then, each man carrying his:^ 
baggage and stores, liimself foremost in the march 
and partaking of every exposure, they plunge into 
the howling wilderness of marshes and forests — a 
tangled, hopeless labyrinth in which their veteran 
guides even lose their way. After a most toilsome 
march of one hundred and twenty miles, they reach 
the neighborhood of the fort unperceived, on the 
evening of July 4th, 1778. Waiting until midnight, 
Clark makes a brief, stirring address to his men, 
then sends Capt. Helm with a detachment across the 
Kaskaskia River to secure and guard the town, and 
himself advances against the fort. A lonely light 
burns in a small house outside the stockade. A cor- 
poral's guard silently secures the party within ; and a 
Pennsylvanian among them, not much a lover of 
England, willingly volunteers to guide the assault, 
and shows them an entrance through a postern gate. 
Colonel Clark, with his main body, takes possession 
of the various defences of the fort ; and the fearless 
Simon Kenton, with a file of men, stepping softly 
into the bedroom of the commander. Lieutenant 



272 PIONEEKS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

Koclieblaiic, governor of the Ulinois country, quietly 
asleep by the side of his wife, touches him. He 
wakes, is informed that he is a prisoner, and is forced 
to make unconditional surrender of the fort and gar- 
rison. But Mrs. Rocheblanc, a bold and shrewish 
dame, springs out of bed in her night-gear, seizes her 
husband's papers and disposes them about her person, 
railing in good set terms at the ungallant intrusion 
into a lady's bed-chamber. And so delicately over- 
polite are the rough sons of the woods that they will 
not lay hands on a woman ; and thus the scold gains 
time to secrete or destroy all the documents. Clark 
now proceed to strike a wholesome fear of the 
"Bostonais," — as the French called all the American 
colonists — into the bosoms of the simple Frenchmen ; 
and the measures he takes for a day or two are well 
calculated to maintain the horrible apprehensions 
which the British have diligently instilled into them 
of the ferocious and bloodthirsty brutality of the 
"Long-Knives." Surrounding the town, he orders 
the troops to whooj) and yell all night, as the In- 
dians do ; sends runners throughout the toAvn to pro- 
claim in French that any enemy found in the streets 
will be instantly shot down ; that all the inhabit- 
ants must observe profound silence ; and that no 
intercourse will be permitted between houses. Then 
he sends a sergeant's guard, who completely disarm 
the town in a couple of hours. When daylight 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 273 

returns, having gained abundant intelligence respect- 
ing tlie posts and defences in the vicinity, and having 
secured his prisoners and sundry suspicious persons, 
and even ironed certain militia officers in the British 
service, he draws off his troops behind a hill, pro- 
hibits all intercourse between them and any doubtful 
characters, and places the town under martial law. 
In all things he acts with an air of stern promptness 
and cold severity, using but few words, and those 
of a menacing character. 

This threatening demeanor soon becomes intolera- 
bly fearful to the simple-minded French. Tliey 
deputed six principal citizens, with the priest, Father 
Gibault, at their head, to beg this terrible com- 
mander to mitigate a little the mysterious vengeance 
thus delaying to fall. The priest and his fellows are 
admitted to the quarters of the American general, 
and find him seated wdth his officers. The almost 
gigantic forms of the dreaded Bostonais, their sordid 
apparel, all torn and begrimed from thicket and 
swamp, their rough, grim features and wild fierce 
looks, appall the very souls of the unwarlike French, 
and for a short season they stand speechless in their 
terror. At length the priest finds voice to prefer, 
he says, one small request. Evidently the townsmen 
were expecting a repetition of the inhuman Acadian 
tragedy. He says, that as his jDCople expect to be 
torn from each other probably forever, they beg 

12* 



274 PIONEERS, PKEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

leave to assembly once more in tlieir little cliurch, to 
take leave of each other. Colonel Clark briefly and 
austerely grants the request, but warns them against 
attempting to leave the town. Something more t]ie 
deputies would have said, but Clark, with a stern 
gesture, intimates that he has no time for further 
conversation, and they retire. Tlie sad congregation 
assembles at church, and indulges in the melancholy 
pleasure of a last farewell ; and again the little em- 
bassy waits on the conqueror. They humbly thank 
him for the favor received ; and add, that although 
they know they must submit to the fate of war, and 
can endure the loss of their pro23erty, they w^ould 
pray not to be separated from their wives and chil- 
dren, and to be allowed some small means of 
support ; and they say something further of the 
submissive ignorance in which they have obeyed 
their commandants ; of their total unacquaintance 
with the causes of the w^ar; and hint at good i.~2clina- 
tion toward the United States. 

Clark turns sternly to the priestly spokesman — 
"Do you take us for savages and cannibals?" he 
asks. " We disdain to war upon the innocent and 
the helpless. We are defending ourselves against 
the Indians — not attacking you. The French king is 
leagued with us ; the victory will soon be ours ; w^e 
only desire to transfer your allegiance from Great 
Britain to the United States ; and, to prove m,v 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 275 

vrords, take home the news that your friends shall be 
released. Yonr townsmen may go where they please, 
safe m persons and property." 

The astounded deputies would now have apolo- 
gized for their mistaken estimate of American cha- 
racter, but are prevented, and desired to communi- 
cate their information to the inhabitants. The most 
unbounded joy instantly takes the place of the terri- 
fied gloom that had darked the town ; the bells ring 
out; and crowding into their well-beloved church 
again, the devout little flock offer heartfelt thanks to 
God for this unexpected release. 

Clark now sent a detachment which secured 
Cahokia ; and the inhabitants of Yincennes, a little 
afterward, themselves expelled the British garrison, 
and declared themselves citizens of the United States 
and of the State of Yirginia. After considerable 
negotiation, in which he exhibited great judgment 
and still more remarkable knowledge of the Indian 
character, he succeeded, before the end of September 
of the same year, in impressing all the tribes of tlie 
Illinois and upper Mississippi with a great respect 
for the American character and name, and in con- 
cluding treaties with all of them. 

Before the end of the year, however, Hamilton 
" the hair-buyer," governor at Detroit, both alarmed 
and ashamed at the brilliant success of Clark, learn- 
ing that many of the Yirginian? hud returned liome, 



276 PIONEERS, PllEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

mustered a force of eiglity soldiers, together with 
some Canadian militia, and, making a rapid march 
down the Wabash, reached Yincennes, now garri- 
soned by Capt. Helm with one soldier and a little 
sqnad of volunteer militia. Hamilton, informed that 
the garrison was feeble, w^as already advancing to 
the attack at the head of his forces, when Helm, 
springing upon a bastion, near a six-pounder trained 
upon the British column, and waving his lighted 
match in the air, hailed them with the stern com- 
mand, " Halt ! or I will blow you to atoms !" A 
little doubtful whether this bold defender would 
not fulfill his threat, Hamilton actually obeyed the 
order, beat a parley, and made a formal demand for 
the surrender of the fort ; to which Helm replied that 
he would capitulate if allowed all the honors of war, 
but otherwise he would hold out the fort as Ions: as a 
man was left alive to shoulder a rifle. Hamilton 
consented to the terms, and was violently disgusted 
when, the gates being thrown open, the bold Ken- 
tuckian marched out with all possible formalities, 
and laid down his arms, together with a force of five 
men, all told ! The lateness of the season preventing 
him from further movements, Hamilton occupied the 
fort at Yincennes, and while he prepared to comj)lete 
his re-conquest of Illinois in the spring, launched 
war-party after war-party upon the frontiers of Yir- 
ginia and Pennsylvania, thus keeping his Indian 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 277 

allies em23loyed uKtil Lis projected combination of 
movements in the spring. 

Col. Clark was informed, in the end of January, 
1779, that Hamilton had now but eighty soldiers at 
Yincennes ; and preferring to take him rather than be 
taken by him, prepared for a winter march against Yin- 
cennes. He set out on the 7th of February, with one 
hundred and thirty men ; having S'snt a detachment 
in an armed keel-boat, to await orders in the Wabash 
below the mouth of White Eiver, and to permit no 
passage upon that stream. For one Imndred and fifty 
miles the little army pursued an Indian trail, through 
dense forests and low prairies, soaked and flooded 
with the long rains of an uncommonly wet season ; 
across creeks commonly fordable with care, but now 
presenting lagoons miles broad, knee-deep, waist- 
deep, even arm-pit deej), so that ^hey must carry 
provisions, arms, and ammunition on their heads, to 
keep them dry. Thus they labor on, through forest 
and low land, through mud and mire, through flood 
stream and falling rain, and in six days have ad- 
vanced a hundred miles, to the crossing of the Little 
Wabash. Wading two feet deep, and often over 
four, they proceed through a similar dreadful coun- 
try seventeen days more, and on the ISth encamp at 
evening on Embarrass Kiver, within nine miles of 
the fort, and within hearing of the morning and 
evening gun. After waiting two days, they succeed 



278 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

in capturing a boat and getting across tlie river. 
Tliere however still remains a broad and deep sheet 
of water, upon reaching which the detachment — 
which indeed could not possibly have sustained the 
hardships of this extraordinary march so long, liad 
not the weather been remarkably mild — showed evi- 
dent signs of alarm and despair. Col. Clark, ob- 
serving this, quietly put some powder in his hand, 
wet it with water, blacked his face, raised an Indian 
war-whoop, and marched into the Avater. Electrified 
and amused, the weary troops forgot their discour- 
agement, plunged in after their stout-hearted leader, 
and, singing in chorus, waded, most of the time up 
to their arm-pits, for miles and miles, until at last 
they reached the oj^posite highlands, so utterly worn 
out that many of the men fell as they touched the 
shore, letting their bodies lie half in the water, rather 
than take the two or three additional steps to higher 
ground. 

Having sent a message to the inhabitants of the 
town, who thought the expedition was from Ken- 
tucky and never dreamed of it coming from Illinois, 
Clark, after resting a day or two, set out for Yin- 
cennes; marched up and down among some hills, 
showing different colors, that his force might look 
three or four times as large as it was ; drew up his 
men back of the village, and sent fourteen riflemen 
to pepper the fort. So complete was the surprise. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 279 

that the crack of the rifle was Hair-buyer Hamilton's 
first intimation of the siege. He was at the moment 
— it was evening — amnsing himself sociably with his 
prisoner Capt. Helm, over a game at cards and a 
glass of apple-toddy. As the report struck his ear, 
Helm sprang up, as if inspired, and cried out, in his 

rough delight, " It's Clark, by , and we shall all 

be his prisoners !" Tlie town at once surrendered. 
The riflemen gathered about the fort, and shot down 
every man who showed himself over the wall. After 
the moon went down, Clark had a deep ditch dug 
within ninety feet of the fort ; and early next day 
the marksmen, posting themselves in it and thus 
sheltered from the guns of the fort, blazed away by 
dozens at every port-hole, silencing two pieces of 
cannon in fifteen minutes, by shooting every man 
who touched them, until the terrified gunners re- 
fused to man the batteries, and the fort lay silent and 
unresisting beneath the unerring aim of the hunters. 
After eighteen hours' firing Clark summoned the 
fort, which Hamilton, after considerable negotiation, 
surrendered. Clark lost only one man before the 
walls ; and during the siege, he also surprised and 
routed a party of Indians, just returned from an 
attack on Kentucky, and took a convoy of goods and 
military supplies sent from Detroit, w^orth about fifty 
thousand dollars. He sent Hamilton and some of his 
officers to Virginia, w^here, along with Rochebhmc 



280 PIONEERS, PIIEACHEK8 AND TKOPLE 

from Kaskaskia, tliey were, with extreme propriety, 
put in close prison in irons, in retaliation for tlie 
horrid cruelties perpetrated under their command on 
the frontier, and for their barbarous treatment of the 
American prisoners. 

In 1780 Col. Clark called on Kentucky for volun- 
teers for an inroad into the Indian country, to reta- 
liate for Byrd's expedition. So ready was the 
response that in a short time he found himself at the 
head of a noble force of a thousand riflemen, with 
whom, using the speed and secrecy so characteristic 
of his military movements, he surprised an Indian 
town in Ohio, slew seventeen of the savages, burned 
their dwellings, and destroyed their crops. The 
Indians were thus obliged to hunt for a living all 
summer, and could not send their accustomed war- 
parties against the settlements. 

With his usual penetrating breadth of view, Clark 
had long considered a scheme for taking the British 
post at Detroit ; and in December, 1780, he induced 
the government of Virginia to cooperate witli him in 
his design. But the invasion of Arnold interrupting 
the plan, he served under Steuben against him ; and 
then resuming it, succeeded so far that two thousand 
troops were to rendezvous at Louisville for the expe- 
dition, in March, 1T81, and he himself was commis- 
sioned brigadier-general. 

But many unforeseen difficulties prevented the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 281 

army from marching ; and the bold and active Clark, 
who had dreamed so long of extirpating the British 
power in the E'orthwest hj thus striking at its centre, 
was obliged to remain almost in idleness, defending 
the frontier against a few scattered bands of Indian 
marauders. Thus chafing in unwelcome restraint, 
he grew discontented ; and then, resorting to a 
greater evil to cure the less, fell into habits of drink- 
ing ; and as thus his high spirit preyed uj)on itself, 
and his unhappy vice sapped strength of mind and 
body together, his great powers showed signs of 
failure. The shrewd, observant backwoodsman, who 
then, as now, judged men as men, and thought them 
neither less nor more for titles, prerogatives, or 
pretensions, saw his lack of that passive endurance 
which marks the loftiest grade of heroism ; saw that 
he was less a soldier and less a man ; and as mind 
and body failed, his influence went down too. 

Yet, in that period of stupid, terrified dejection, 
which followed the great calamity of the defeat at 
Blue Licks in 1782, where the furious, reckless rash- 
ness of one man — Hugh McGary — cost Kentucky a 
confounding defeat, and the lives of sixty of her best 
and bravest men. Gen. Clark showed himself still a 
ready and active soldier. He proclaimed that he 
would lead his regiment upon a retaliatory expedi- 
tion into Ohio, and called again for volunteers, 'o 
gathered to his standard with the old-time prompti' 



282 PIONEEES, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

tude. Again a thousand riflemen assembled on the 
Ohio, and marched npon the Indian towns. The 
savages fled so fast before this powerful and vengeful 
force, that not only did they nowhere ofl'er to resist, 
but only twelve in all were either killed or taken. 
Five of their towns were burned, and a vast quantity 
of their provisions, being all their crops, were de- 
stroyed; and so severe w^as this lesson to the Indians, 
that from that time they dared no longer invade 
Kentucky, except in sly, small war-parties. 

Once more, in 1786, General Clark headed an 
army destined against the Lidian towns on the 
Wabash River ; but the expedition was unsuccessful, 
and returned without reaching its destination. After 
this, Clark's name appears no more in public transac- 
tions, except as temporary holder of a major-general's 
commission from France in that force wdiicli the 
frantic visionary and revolutionary democrat, Genet, 
would fain have raised in Kentucky to bring Spanish 
Louisiana under the dominion of the French repub- 
lic. After long suffering from infirmities, his power- 
ful frame succumbed to a paralysis growing out of 
rheumatic disorders. He died at Locust Grove, 
near Louisville, in February, 1818, and was buried 
there. 

This brief and unsatisfactory sketch is all that my 
space allows me to devote to the great qualities and 
bold deeds of "the Washington of the West" — 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 283 

unquestionably the greatest military genius ever 
produced by Virginia, notwitlistanding that the only 
area for his operations "was tlic pathless "wilderness 
beyond the mountain; and unequalled among all the 
western pioneers, not only for military ability and 
daring, speed and secrecy, but for practical states- 
manship, political foresight, judgment in combining 
plans, and energy in executing them ; and a quality 
still higher, which points him out yet more clearly as 
a born ruler and a statesman, namely, the power of 
controlling men. His genius was sufficiently shown 
in the success with which he led his hardy little 
band, through unparalleled sufferings, against Yin cen- 
nes, and in the complete obedience and subordination 
which he so easily obtained from the rude, reckless, 
and utterly independent hunters and fighters of the 
forest ; but it appears still more in the influence and 
admiration which he gained among the wild savage 
tribes of the !N'orthwest, who feared and wondered at 
him almost as at a superhuman being. 

To give one more touch to the sketch I have 
attempted to draw, of life in the cabin homes of the 
wilderness during the JRevolution — for no single lec- 
ture gives space for more than a sketch — let me 
briefly narrate a single achievement, which story has 
been often told before, but which has not yet lost its 
romantic freshness ; a story which nobly illustrates 
the generous daring and military abilities of the sons 



284 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

of the western woods — the story of the battle of 
King's Mountain. 

I will first briefly sketch the deeds of the mountain 
men before their gallant attack on Ferguson. Col. 
John Sevier, chief militia officer of the eastern part 
of the State of Tennessee — then Washington County in 
North Carolina — received in March, 1T80, a requisi- 
tion from General Rutherford, of North Carolina, for 
one hundred men to be sent to the aid of South 
Carolina. Colonel Isaac Shelby, of Sullivan County, 
also then in North Carolina, received a similar requi- 
sition. They each raised two hundred mounted rifle- 
men ; but were fortunately too late to reach Huther- 
ford, and sufler in the fatal battle of Camden. They, 
however, reached the camp of Colonel McDowell, 
Rutherford's second in command, in July, and were 
presently sent to attack Colonel Moore, who had 
been raising the tories in the western Caroliuas for 
the king, and now occupied a strong fort on the 
Pacolet River. With six hundred men more under 
Colonel Clark of Georgia, the riflemen, a thousand 
in all, set off at sunset, marched twenty miles that 
night, and at dawn had surrounded the fort, which, 
after some parley, surrendered. 

Cornwallis, irritated at this bold stroke, detached 
Col. Patrick Ferguson with one hundred picked men, 
to gather and train the tories of the western counties 
of South Carolina, and to take and hold the strongest 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 285 

positions there. Ferguson was a bold, experienced 
and successful soldier, himself a trained and skillful 
rifle shot, and a ready and ingenious man. He had 
already invented, to oppose the fatal skill of the 
mountain rifles so much feared by regulars and low- 
land tories, a breech-loading rifle, capable of being 
discharged seven times in a minute. He soon raised 
so many loyalists as put him at the head of two 
thousand men, and a small body of horse. Col. 
McDowell detached Shelby and Col. Clark with six 
hundred men to watch his movements and cut oflT his 
foragers. These Ferguson repeatedly but vainly 
endeavored to surprise. It would have been strange 
indeed if the regulars could have surprised those sly 
Indian-fighters ! He did once, it is true, come up 
with them ; but when he did come up, the Ameri- 
cans, who were sharply engaged with his advanced 
guard, rode ofl^ with twenty prisoners, two of them 
officers, whom they had just taken ; so that Col. Fer- 
guson only lost by his haste. 

Col. McDowell soon sent Shelby and Clark, to- 
gether with Col. Williams of South Carolina and six 
hundred men, to surprise a party of some five hun- 
dred tories at Musgrove's Mill on the Ennoree, about 
forty miles distant, and in a line directly beyond Fer- 
guson's camp. Again the hardy riders, setting out 
at dusk, riding hard all night long, and skirting round 
Ferguson's camp four or five miles oft", met at dawn 



286 PIONEEKS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

a strong patrol, about half a mile from the tory 
camp. These they drove in, and at the same time 
learned that instead of five hundred, the enemy in 
front numbered more than twice as many, having just 
received a reinforcement of six hundred regulars. 
Evidently they could neither attack double their 
number, wearied as they were by their long night 
ride ; nor could they for the same reason safely re- 
treat. They therefore determined to hold their 
ground and receive the enemy's attack. Sending 
forward an advanced party to skirmish, fire and 
retire at discretion, they speedily threw up a slight 
breastwork of logs and brushwood, and lay down 
behind it. The tory drums and bugles soon an- 
nounced their advance with horse and foot; they 
drove in the scattered advanced guard, and thinking 
that all the Americans w^ere retreating, advanced 
hastily and in disorderly array, until they w^ere 
greeted, at seventy yards from the breastwork, with 
a destructive fire. Undismayed, they attacked with 
spirit, but for a whole hour could make no impres- 
sion upon the feeble but stoutly defended line of the 
riflemen. Just as part of the Americans were be- 
ginning to give way, Col. Innes, the British com- 
mander, was wounded. Every one of his subalterns 
but one was already killed or wounded ; Captain 
Hawsey, a notorious tory leader, in command of the 
loyalists, was shot ; the whole British line wavered, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 287 

and a furious charge from the riflemen drove them 
in disorder over the Ennoree. The tories fled lirst, 
and of the regulars, who fought like brave men, more 
than two hundred were made prisoners. 

The indefatigable mountain men, withont waiting 
to rest, remounted their horses, which had been re- 
posing during the battle, and prepared to swoop 
down upon the British fort at ]S['inetv-Six, thirty 
miles further. As thej were in the act of starting, 
an express came np with a letter which lie gave to 
Col. Shelby. It was forwarded by McDowell ; was 
from Governor Caswell of Xorth Carolina, dated on 
the battle-field of Camden, bringing the news of that 
fatal field ; and advised McDowell to "get out of the 
way," for that the enemy would now endeavor to cut 
off in detail all detached parties of Americans. So 
much false and erroneous intelligence w^as abroad in 
those days of treachery and peril that none would 
have known whether to believe this sad letter, had 
not Col. Shelby been familiar with Gov. Caswell's 
hand-writing. Instant decision was necessary, and 
was made. It was probable that Ferguson was now 
informed of the defeat on the Ennoree, and would 
instantly push to cnt them ofi" from McDowell. 'Nor 
wonld their weary horses and wearier selves admit 
of the further advance on Ninety-Six, through 
regions swarming with tories now encouraged by 
the British successes over Gates and Sumptei It 



288 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

was not safe to delay even an hour, lest the energetic 
Ferguson should be upon them. The prisoners were 
instantly distributed, one to each three horsemen, to 
take turns in riding behind them; and the whole 
force, facing westward, rode straight for the moun- 
tains. "Weary as they were, they pushed on all that 
day, all the night, and all the next day until late in 
the evening, without a single halt. This prompt 
retreat and desperate speed saved them ; for it after- 
ward appeared that Ferguson's second in command. 
Captain Dupoister, had ridden hard after them with 
a strong force of horse, until at the end of the second 
day his men broke down under the fatigue and heat. 
Shelby passed the mountain ; Clark and Williams 
carried the prisoners northward. McDowell's army 
disbanded, and he and many of his men also crossed 
the mountain to the hospitable settlements of "Wata- 
uga and Nollichucky, w^hence had come many of the 
bold riflemen who fought so well against Moore and 
Innes. 

Thus disappeared the last remnant of an American 
army south of the Potomac, except the dispirited and 
broken band that remained with Gates at Hills- 
boro'. Congress was penniless and bankrupt ; the 
States were little better ; the army unfed, unpaid, 
and miserable ; the whole country distressed and dis- 
couraged ; the British triumphant, their forces rava- 
ging and rioting at will up and down the land, and 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 289 

tlieir torj allies waging an inliumaii and monstrous 
warfare upon tlieir whig neiglibors and countrymen. 
Large nmnbers of the Carolina wliigs sent their families 
across the momitains for safety, themselves remain- 
ing in the extremest peril to protect their property. 
Earl Cornwallis, having occupied his time until the 
arrival of provisions from Charleston, in putting into 
operation a rigorous system of military tyranny — not 
hesitating to murder and banish the whigs and rob 
them of their j)roperty, to uphold his authority in 
South Carolina — advanced from Camden toward 
Yirginia, on the 18th of September, 1780. 

Col. Ferguson, at the head of his force of regulars 
and loyalists, had been diligently at work among the 
tories in the western counties. He had followed close 
after Dupoister in tlie fruitless chase of Shelby and 
his mountain men ; but failing in this, had now 
posted himself at Gilbert Town, near Rutherfordton, 
in E'orth Carolina, not far from the foot of the moun- 
tains. Here he delivered to one Phillips, a prisoner 
on parole, a haughty message to the people Vv'est of 
the mountains : that if they did not cease opposing 
the British arms, he would come across, lay the 
country waste, and hang their chiefs. 

This message Phillips brought to Shelby in the end 
of August. That leader, mounting in haste, rode 
fifty miles and more to his brother colonel, Sevier, 
and on consulting, they determined to raise as large 

13 



290 PIONEERS, PKEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

a force of riflemen as possible, make a forced march 
througli the mountain, and surprise Ferguson, or, at 
least, weaken him and render him unable to fulfill 
his threat. 

The rendezvous was fixed for the twenty-fifth of 
September, at Sycamore Shoals, in Watauga. Here, 
on the appointed day, gathered more than a thousand 
men, many of them armed and equipped with money 
obtained on the personal security of Shelby and 
Sevier; all well mounted ; almost every man carrying 
a Deckhard rifle — a choice weapon for true aim and 
long range, named from its maker, a famous gun- 
smith of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. I^early all 
wore the hunting-shirt of the backwoods, leggins and 
moccasins ; a few appearing in their usual citizens' 
dress. Yolunteers for the defence of their hearth- 
stones, they needed neither uniform nor esjprit de 
corps^ except what common danger and common 
patriotism inspired. 

Early next morning, after prayer by a clergyman 
present, the riflemen mounted and took up the line 
of march, following trading and pioneer paths. Un- 
encumbered with the staft' and baggage of a regular 
army, they moved so rapidly that on the second day 
they abandoned some cattle which they had under- 
taken to drive along for provisions. Light-armed, 
with rifle, shot-pouch, knife, tomahawk, knapsack 
and blanket, they hunted as they went, for food, and 



OF THE :Rnssissippi. 291 

drank the water of tlie mountain streams, until after 
passing the mountains, when thej quartered them- 
selves on the tories. 

On the day after starting, two men were missing. 
Thej had deserted to the enemy. To render their 
information useless, the army descended the eastern 
slope of the Alleghany by remote and unfrequented 
paths ; and on reaching the foot, fell in with a party 
of several himdred whigs, waiting there in the woods 
for an opportunity to act against the British. These 
gladly joined them. And from all the settlements 
small daily additions were made to the force of brave 
men eager to reach the foe. 

October 3d a council was held, within eighteen 
miles of Ferguson's post at Gilbert Town. After 
some discussion, a messenger was sent to Gates for a 
general officer to command the force, and Colonel 
Campbell, who had led four hundred men to the 
rendezvous at TVatauga, was chosen commander in 
the interim. Next day the mountain army advanced 
to Gilbert Town ; but Ferguson was gone. He had 
heard of the vengeful storm gathering along the 
western mountains, and after exhausting the lan- 
guage of entreaty and reproach upon the intimidated 
loyalists — who feared it too — in endeavors to assemble 
them about his standard, he unwillingly retreated 
toward Cornwallis, sending him an urgent request 
for a reinforcement, and marcliing hi several dii'cc- 



292 PIONEEES, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

tions among loyalist neigliborlioods, to keep out of 
the way of the riflemen. 

But Col. Campbell and his hardy riders understand 
Ferguson's movements. A council is held, and a 
still more rapid pursuit resolved on. All that night 
the commanders pick the best men, horses and rifles, 
and at dawn set out again with nine hundred and 
ten of the flower of the army, leaving the rest to fol- 
low more leisurely. They hear, as they hasten along, 
of one and another large gathering of tories, but on 
they go; they are striking for Ferguson, and will 
turn aside for no meaner game. Four hundred and 
sixty more men, under Col. Hambright and Col. 
Williams, join them at the Cow Pens, where they 
halt and alight for an hour to refresh. Except this 
delay, the indefatigable riflemen never once stopped 
during the last thirty-six hours of the pursuit. 

It is the morning of the Yth of October, 1780. The 
determined mountain men are still sternly hastening 
upon the hourly freshening traces of the fleeing Fer- 
guson. They ride on through a rain so heavy that 
they are fain to keep the locks of their rifles dr^^ by 
wrapping them with blankets and hunting shirts, 
even at the expense of exposing themselves to the 
storm. The advanced guard comes up w^ith some 
unarmed men, who report themselves just from Fer- 
guson's camp. A brief halt is made, and a close ex- 
amination discovers the facts, that Ferguson is in 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 293 

camp three miles in front; that next day he proposes 
to march to Cornwallis's headquarters ; and that cer- 
tain roads will lead directly to his camp, which is 
pitched on ground which Col. "Williams declares, on 
description, that he and some of his men know well. 
Brief consultation suffices. Ferguson must never 
reach the camp of the haughty British earl. The 
storm has cleared away. They resolve to march at 
once, to complete their work first, and rest and re- 
fresh afterward. The command is at once given to 
put the rifles in fighting condition and prime anew ; 
the order of battle is the well-known hereditary ma- 
noeuvre of the Indians and of these veteran Indian 
fighters : to surround the enemy and attack him at 
once from all sides ; and remounting, the little army 
is again in motion. Within one mile of the enemy 
an express to Cornwallis is taken ; on his 2:)erson is 
found an urgent letter to the earl, stating Ferguson's 
force — the numher of which, eleven hundred and 
twenty-five men, is prudently concealed from the 
Americans by their officers — demanding instant re- 
inforcements, and informing his commander-in-chief 
that he is securely encamped on the top of a hill 
which he had named King's Mountain, in honor of 
his majesty; and that "if all the rebels out of hell 
should attack him, they could not drive him from it." 
All these items, except his force, are communicated 
to the Americans; and spurring on, they advance at 



294 



a gallop to a point within sight of Ferguson's strong- 
hold. Arriving within view of the field of battle, it 
is at once evident that the right phan has been 
adopted. Ferguson and his regulars and tories hold 
the crest of the mountain, in a line about a quarter 
of a mile long — an isolated height rising from the 
general level of the country, and covered and crowned 
w^ith open woods. The final orders for tlie battle are 
given, while yet out of rifle-shot : Campbell, Shelby, 
Sevier, McDowell and Winston, with their men, are 
to file to the right, round the miountain ; Hambright 
and Chronicle are to pass round the other wa}^ and 
meet them ; and Cleveland and Williams to fill tlie 
remainder of the line in front. When in position, 
each division is to front face, raise the war-whoop 
and charge. They advance again, dismount about a 
third of a mile from the hilltop, tie their horses, and 
the detachments separate for their places. Before 
they are quite ready, the enemy, hitherto silent and 
v/atchful, open fire and wound some of Shelby's men. 
Shelby and McDowell, on this, face at once toward 
the foe, and return their fire with eftect ; while Cani})- 
bell's column, coming np, charges fiercely up the 
mountain and commences a fatal fire on the tories 
who hold that end of the line. Ferguson, hearing 
the firing, sends a force of regulars from the other 
end of his line, and with levelled bayonets tliey 
charge upon ^he advancing columns of McDowell, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 295 

Shelby and Sevier. So furious is their assault, that 
those three columns are driven headlong down the 
hill. But at this very moment, the four columns on 
the left, having, pushed np the hill and driven in the 
pickets, begin a close and heavy fire upon the regu- 
lars, v^ho have liere a slight breastwork of wagons, 
and are under the command of Ferguson himself. 
Capt. Dupoister, who had headed the charge on 
Shelby, is at once recalled, receiving as he comes a 
severe fire from Col. Williams' column, and is or- 
dered to charge again with all the regulars upon 
their new adversaries. Again the bayonets are 
levelled, and a desperate attack drives the riflemen 
to the foot of the hill. Major Chronicle being killed 
in the struggle. 

It is of course, impossible for riflemen to withstand 
the shock of a bayonet charge. But the resolute 
mountain men, though they retreat, do it only to re- 
new the flght ; for the enemy dared not advance 
many rods from his vantage-ground above. As 
Dupoister returns from his charge on Shelby, to 
charge again on Cleveland and Chronicle, the columns 
of Shelby, Campbell and McDowell follow him up, 
rallying readily to the shout that the British are re- 
treating ; and j)ushing up almost to the British camp, 
they exchange a deadly fire with the tory riflemen at 
that end of the height. Again the bayonet is tried ; 
but already the fatal rifle-bullet has thinned tlio 



296 PIONEEES, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ranks of Ferguson's scanty band of regulars until the 
British colonel is forced to have his tories' butcher- 
knives stuck into the muzzles of their rifles, for 
bayonets, before he can muster a line strong enough 
for the charge. Down they come, however, and 
again the riflemen retreat before them ; but this time 
not so far, and after a comparatively feeble attack, 
Dupoister retired within his lines. 

And now the American columns have surrounded 
the mountain, and closing in, a fatal ring of fire 
draws slowly and sternly up around the stubborn 
British colonel and his bold troops. While a fierce 
discharge is kept up at each end of the British posi- 
tion, Sevier's column now makes a powerful attack 
upon their centre. The British forces are partly 
concentrated to repel these obstinate assaults ; and 
while a stubborn contest is maintained here, Shelby 
and Campbell, with one bold charge, reach the crest 
of the mountain at the end held by the tories, efl'ect 
a lodgment, and slowly but surely drive their traitor- 
ous foes in toward the other extremity of the line. 

Hotter and closer grows the ring of the fire ; and 
still the levelled bayonets gleam on this side and 
on that, and the light-footed mountain men, vanish- 
ing before them, swarm back upon their footsteps 
the moment they halt, while the Americans on the 
opposite side seize the opportunity to advance again 
in their turn. But the charo-es of the wearied and 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 297 

fearfully diminislied band of regulars grow less 
furious and shorter. And all the time Shelby and 
Campbell are creeping along the crest of the hill, 
driving the tories before them, crowding them in 
upon the regulars, the deadly mountain rifles pick- 
ing them off with fearful rapidity. Ferguson, cool 
and daring as ever, still rides up and down his line, 
encouraging his men, supporting the weakest places, 
exposing himself to every danger, and carrying in 
one hand, which has been wounded, a silver whistle, 
whose loud and piercing sound, heard over the whole 
battle-field, enables him to signal instantaneously to 
all his men. He sends Dupoister with the regulars 
to reinforce a weak position. It is but one hundred 
yards away; but before he reaches it, the fatal 
Deckhard rifles have left him so few men that their 
aid is not worth counting. 

Ferguson now orders his cavalry to mount; in- 
tending to head them, and sweep down in a resistless 
attack upon the Americans. But they cannot mount, 
or if they do, they fall out of their saddles as fast as 
they reach them ; for lifted on the horses, they pre- 
sent a fairer mark for the rifles. 

And still the ring of fire contracts ; and now, 
driven in disorder, far in from the British left, the 
tories, who always blenched first when they fought 
beside the regulars, dismayed and hopeless, raise the 
white flag of surrender. But Ferguson gallops up 
13* 



298 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

and tears it down. Then tlie regulars at tlie otliei 
end of the line raise another, and the heroic con> 
mander, seeminglj the onlj man left in the host^ 
rides back again through the iire and cuts it down 
with his sabre. This second time his brave subor- 
dinate Dupoister, who had admonished him before 
that further resistance was hopeless, and that he ought 
to surrender, admonishes him again. But he de- 
clares in the bitterness of his soul that he "will 
never surrender to such a damned set of banditti." 
And still riding desperately to and fro, he encourages 
and strengthens the wavering ranks, and alone 
restores the battle ; for w^henever his voice or his 
whistle is heard, the enemy rallies again, and figlits 
bravely. But the riflemen, seeing that his resistance 
wdll end only with his life, after having seemingly 
spared him for his bravery for a long time, now 
forced to make an end of the contest, aim their fatal 
weapons at him. He falls, and dies at once. 

Dupoister, now left in command, seeing that his 
men, few in number, crowded in disorder together, 
and falling rapidly under the dreadful concentrated 
fire of the Americans, could no longer hope for suc- 
cess or safety, almost immediately raised the white 
flag again, and called out for quarter. The fire of the 
Americans ceased, except from a few young men, 
who either did not know what the flag meant, or sup- 
posed it would come down again as before. Shelby 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 299 

called out to the British to throw down their arms, 
which they did ; when all firing ceased, and the Ame- 
ricans, after one hour's hard fighting, were com- 
pletely victorious. 

Ferguson's force was annihilated ; for two hundred 
and twenty-five were killed, nearly two hundred more 
disabled, and all the rest, more than seven hundred, 
prisoners, l^ot one man escaped. Tlie Americans 
had lost about thirty killed, and sixty wounded. En- 
camping on the battle-field that night, they rose 
early, and at dawn — a peaceful Sabbath dawn — went 
forth and buried their dead. Then they burned the 
wagons of the enemy, and prepared to return to the 
mountains, with their seven hundred prisoners, fifteen 
hundred stands of arms, many horses, and a great 
mass of supplies and booty. In the midst of a tory 
neighborhood, near Cornwallis, and with more pri- 
soners than they could saiely spare guards to watch, 
the mountaineers were seriously embarrassed with 
their success. Taking the flints out of the captured 
arms, however, they made the strongest of the pri- 
soners carry them ; marched all day at a " present," 
keeping close watch on the prisoners, and at sundown 
met the remainder of their own force, with whom 
they kept on westward until the fourteenth. Then, 
halting near the foot of the mountains, they held a 
court-martial upon sundry of the tory prisoners, atro- 
cious violators of the laws of their country and of hu- 



300 PIONEEESj PEEACIIEKS AND TEOPLE 

inanity ; condemned thirty of them to the death 
which they had a thousand times richly deserved ; 
but liung only nine of the worst, respiting the re- 
mainder. Justice thus executed, Sevier and his force 
crossed the mountains, and put themselve in readi- 
ness to defend their homes, if necessary ; while Camp- 
bell, Shelby and Cleveland guarded their prisoners 
northward to secure captivity. 

This bold and splendid achievement was the turn of 
the tide in the affairs of the war. Without it, it is 
difficult to see what limits could have been set to 
Cornwallis's victorious progress northward, imop- 
posed as he was by any embodied force, and daily 
reinforced in camp by tory levies, while other gangs 
of those ignoble banditti, starting up everywhere, 
were daily riveting the chains of the hateful Britisli 
authority over all the South behind them. 

But the destruction of Ferguson and his host ex- 
ploded in the midst of Earl Cornwallis's plans like a 
thunderbolt in a powder magazine. It scattered 
them to the four winds of heaven ; the few fragments 
left for reconstruction formed only a frustrated and 
strengthless plan ; and the pause of astonished terror 
that followed afforded time for the dispirited Ameri- 
cans to rally again, and enter upon that series of ope- 
rations so gloriously consummated at Yorktown. 

When Cornwallis heard the news, magnified by its 
journey into the startling story that the victorious 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 301 

host of riflemen, three thousand strong, were in full 
march toward his camp, he instantly gave up, for 
the time, his northward march, struck his tents, 
marched back toward the south ail night in the 
greatest confusion, crossed the Catawba, and never 
stopped until he reached Winnsboro', a hundred 
miles away, where he remained, quiet and frightened, 
for three months. During this respite, the ISTorth 
Carolina whigs rallied and gathered in considerable 
force. General Smallwood, with his veteran and 
celebrated Maryland corps, and Morgan's riflemen, 
strengthened them. Gates soon joined them, with 
the sad remains of the Southern army. From Hills- 
boro', a thousand Yirginians came down. General 
!N"athaniel Greene assumed the command of this new 
force in December, and America was again in a con- 
dition at least to face the foe, and maintain, with re- 
newed courage, the contest which seemed to have 
been decided upon the terrible field of Camden. To 
those hardy sons of the wilderness, the mountain men 
of eastern Tennessee and western Yirginia, in all 
probability, is due the glory and the praise of having 
decided the question of the acquirement of our na- 
tional independence. 



Lecture VII. 

SKETCHES OF 

CHARACTER AND ADVENTURE 

m THE WEST, 
TO THE FAILURE OF BURR'S EXPEDITION, 1806. 



SKETCHES OF 

CHAHACTER AND ADVENTURE 
IX THE WEST, 

TO THE FAILURE OF BURR'S EXPEDITION, 1806. 

The close of the Revolutionary struggle left our 
ancestors weak and well-nigli disabled by tlieir long, 
unequal contest, and torn by internal dissensions and 
broils. Threatened by external force, the govern- 
ment impoverished to the last degree and as credit- 
less as a notorious spendthrift, the currency depre- 
ciated as far as depreciation was possible, all things 
seemed to portend dismemberment and anarchy ; a 
state far worse than that in which the commence- 
ment of the struggle found them. But the bound- 
less recuperative energies peculiar to our people, 
came to their rescue, and out of the wild chaos of 
inharmonious elements, there arose in course of time 
the magnificent fabric of civic order, symmetry, and 
splendor, beneath whose protection we and our 
children sit. 

I have spoken of the depreciation of the cur- 
rency. In Yirginia, at the close of the Revolu- 

305 



306 PIONEERS, TEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

tion, a bowl of rum punch cost five hundred dol- 
lars, in the ordinary currency of the time ; in 'New 
England, a mug of cider was once bought for one 
hundred dollars. " Part of an old shirt " was valued, 
in an inventory of an estate, at three pounds. Gen. 
Green Clay, an eminent surveyor and citizen of the 
State — or rather, at that time, the District — of Ken- 
tucky, riding a spirited horse from the west side of 
the mountains to the east, disposed of him to one of 
the French officers attached to the army which aided 
Washington in the taking of Cornwallis, for the 
moderate sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars, 
which he invested in wild western lands ; and these, 
forty years ago, were worth half a million of dollars. 

The bond which held the colonies together was of the 
slightest imaginable description. The old Congress 
had limited powers, and was afraid to use what it 
had ; rarely daring to assume any responsibility. 

What was to be done ? How should the treasury be 
replenished ? How should the credit of the country 
be established ? Virginia, always the readiest of the 
sisters of the confederacy to do what in her lay to 
speed any good work, assigned to the general govern- 
ment that mao^nificent domain which belonored to her 
in virtue of conquest ; which the perseverance and 
heroism of her sons, inspired and guided by the indo- 
mitable energy of George Kogers Clark, had wrested 
from the power of Britain and made her own property. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. SOT 

All that vast and splendid country, afterward 
Jvnowu as the E'orthwestern Territory, was thus given 
fieely to the general government, in order that bj 
the sale of its lands to emigrants and settlers at such 
a moderate price as their resources would justity, the 
coffers of the Republic might be filled. Massachusetts 
had a partial claim to what is now the State of Ohio ; 
but always desiring to look before she leaj)ed, always 
keeping a sharp eye on the main chance, she waited 
to see what should be the end of the matter ; so that 
it was not until 1786, two years after Virginia had 
given to the United States what formed afterward 
the States of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and the 
greater portion of Ohio, that Massachusetts surren- 
dered her claim to the western country, by cession to 
the general government. Last of all, old Connecti- 
cut, who held with a still more unrelaxing gras^D to 
her reserved territory in the northeastern corner of 
Ohio, at length became convinced of the propriety 
and justice of ceding her claim, and did so. 

Thus, the whole of that wide domain passed into 
possession of the federal government. At first, how- 
ever, it was of comparatively slight use to the people. 
The Indians held most of it ; and although hostilities 
upon their part were suspended for a short time 
immediately after the close of the Eevolution, yet, as 
their late ally, the government of Great Britain, made 
no terms for them in the treaty of 1783, but left them t,> 



308 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

care for themselves, and as the United States claimed 
that territory by right of conquest, without stipula- 
tion or provision for compensation to them, granting 
them only slight reserves for residence and hunting- 
grounds, their ire was again awakened, and their ven- 
geance was ready to descend uj)on the frontiers. 

Further, Spain and France had aided our country 
in the struggle against our mother; but after that 
struggle was ended, and we had achieved our inde- 
pendence, they asked to be remembered and com^^en- 
sated for their exj^enditure in our behalf Both were 
in quest of territory. Both were jealous of the 
predicted power and greatness of the new nation. 
Both desired, in common with Great Britain, to 
restrict our fathers within certain predetermined 
limits. France and England joining, desired to 
make the Ohio Biver onr northern boundary. Spain, 
on another side, desired to keep them east of the 
Mississippi and north of the Yazoo, that she might 
remain in possession of all the district lying south 
and west of those rivers, for her own occupancy. 
One difficulty after another was thrown in the way 
of our national diplomacy. The old confederated 
Congress found itself incapable of the task it had 
shouldered ; unequal to the difficulties of the emer- 
gency. It is not my province to detail to you the 
history of the convention for the formation of the 
Constitution; the theory or powers of the new gov- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. ^ 309 

eminent; nor the policy of the cabmet of George 
"Washington, with its t^Yo poles of dissimilar charac- 
ter and creed, hy way of equipoise — Thomas 
Jefferson representing the Republican or Democratic, 
and Alexander Hamilton the Federal principle. The 
great diplomatist of this administration was John 
Jay — for intellect, patriotism, clear-sighted subtlety, 
nobility of purpose and force of character, and lofty 
purity of morals, one of the proudest names which 
our annals can boast. Jay, at this time, charged 
with the duty of negotiating treaties with England 
and Spain, found himself in a most perplexing situa- 
tion. Spain claimed the right of ownership to the 
Mississippi River; denied the right of the western 
people to navigate that river, and was about to close 
all the ports upon the Gulf against our commerce, 
and thus cut off the people w^est of the mountai]is 
from all opportunity for foreign exchanges. Enor- 
mous croj^s of all kinds grew up in their fertile and 
exuberant fields, but there was no market in which 
they could sell. Tliey had pressing needs, but there 
was no market where they could buy. Their only 
opportunities for obtaining the most necessary mer- 
chandise were by mule tracks and pathways across 
the Alleghany Mountains, from Baltimore and Fre- 
derick. Long trains of these animals, with pack- 
saddles laden with salt, iron, and lead, and whatever 
else was in demand among the emigrants and settlers 



310 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

of the West, were daily trayelling the mountain 
roads, at all seasons of the year. 

But this meagre system of exchange offered no 
prospect either of speedy wealth to those engaged in 
it, or of present or future adequacy to the wants of 
the western settlements, now beginning to increase so 
vigorously. 

Already the feeling had become definite and uni- 
versal among the w^estern settlers, that the free 
navigation of the Mississippi must be secured ; when, 
in 1784, an assembly of the peoj)le of Kentucky was 
summoned at Danville, by Col. Logan, one of their 
oldest and ablest pioneers, to consult upon measures 
for opposing an invasion by the southern Indians, 
which he had learned was in contemplation. This 
rumor proved to be incorrect ; but the assembly, 
which contained a large number of influential and 
Intelligent citizens, who had come together under the 
impression that it was intended to wage an energetic 
warfare upon the northwestern Indians, took occasion 
to examine the existing laws applicable to the raising 
of a military force ; when, to the common surprise 
and chagrin, it plainly appeared that since the end 
of the war, there was no existing authority to call 
out men for any expedition against Indians or any 
other enemy, nor even to assemble volunteers or 
militia for the defence of their own homes and 
hearths. Open on three sides to the incursions of a 



OF THE ivnssissippi. 31 1 

ferocious and active enemy, their hands were efi'ectu- 
allj tied, and no defence left them except such purely 
voluntary aid as might be given without the counte- 
nance of laws. Such a state of things was unendura- 
ble ; and even in time of safety, the growing and 
high-spirited District of Kentucky, now composed 
of three large counties, could not but be restive 
under the tardy and difficult administration of a 
government acting at Kichmond, and separated from 
the western settlements by so many hundred miles 
of monntain and forest. The assembly was unani- 
mously and earnestly of opinion that Kentucky should 
have a government independent of Virginia; but 
having no legal authority, recommended a conven- 
tion of delegates, one to be chosen from each militia 
company, to assemble in December of the same 
year, to consider the question of separation from 
Yirginia. 

Tliis convention assembled, and was the first of a 
series of nine, successively called by the Kentuck- 
ians — unused to the management of representative 
machinery — or required by the Assembly of Yirginia 
or by Congress, in the course of the long series of 
legislation and negotiation that lasted for seven 
tedious and wearisome years, before the final act 
of 1791 constituted Kentucky a State. During all 
this long period, the feeble and disorganized com- 
mnnity beyond the mountains Vv^as vexed by a seem- 



312 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ingly interminable series of conventions ; by uncer- 
tainty and fear respecting its fate ; by incessant and 
cruel hostilities from Indians and English ; by party 
spirit of the violent and reckless type which so com- 
monly curses newly-settled States ; and by the artful 
and secret intrigues of agents and partisans of the 
court of Spain. 

In 1784, while all these disturbing influences were 
actively at work, there crossed the mountains, from 
Maryland, a distinguished citizen and soldier of that 
State, who had played a conspicuous part in the 
Revolution, General James "Wilkinson ; a man long- 
afterward intimately connected with all the princi- 
pal political movements in the West. He had been 
aid-de-camp to General Gates ; had figured, with 
considerable credit, in many of the struggles of the 
Revolution; and, at the conclusion, finding his for- 
tunes impaired and his finances in so complicated a 
condition that, with his present means, there were 
no hopes of remedy, he directed a sagacious eye to 
the growing "West ; and deciding promptly upon a 
removal, came with a stock of goods to w^hat is now 
Lexington, in Kentucky, for the purpose of establish- 
ing himself in trade. His fine personal appearance, 
winning manners, agreeable and dignified address — 
his tact and ingenuity, knowledge of and adaptation to 
human nature, and subtlety of speech — his powers of 
insinuation, and plausibilit}^ — his elonuence, whetlier 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 313 

spoken or written, equally adapted to the popular 
level — all tliese endowments placed liim at once in 
the highest position in the country. He was elected 
a member of several of the organizing conventions; 
became a prominent political character at once ; and 
when the question of the navigation of the Missis- 
sippi absorbed a large portion of the attention of the 
lientuckians, this bold man embarked upon a haz- 
ardous adventure. He procured a flat-boat, loaded 
it with tobacco, descended the Ohio, and then the 
Mississippi, and depositing his cargo in ^ew Orleans, 
opened negotiations with the Spanish government. 
The secret portion of his correspondence with Baron 
de Carondelet, the Spanish governor at N'ew Orleans, 
has never been made public ; but General Wilkinson 
returned to Kentucky and informed the inhabitants 
that he had made certain overtures to Carondelet; 
that he had acquired for himself, by judicious nego- 
tiation, the right of deposit for all his merchandise, 
be it of what sort soever, in the government ware- 
houses of the capital of Louisiana ; and that he had 
secured a permission to trade there for a given num- 
ber of years. He began at once to purchase all the 
products of Kentucky for the pur]30se of prosecuting 
this trade. He hinted furthermore that Carondelet 
had informed him, under proper instructions from the 
Spanish government, that if the people of Kentucky, 
would sever their relations with the older States and 

14 



314: 

erect themselves into an independent territory oi 
State, Sj)ain would treat or negotiate with them 
making such treaties as should be most desirable and 
agreeable to them, relative to outlets for trade or 
otherwise. 

This Vv'as the first hint the people of Kentucky 
received in regard to this matter. Wilkinson for 
some time continued his trade with iN'ew Orleans, 
and began to lay the foundation of an immense for- 
tune. Carondelet, not satisfied with his negotiations 
with Wilkinson, sent one Power to approach some of 
the other distinguished citizens of the District — for a 
district it still remained. This man came to Benjamin 
Sebastian, a prominent lawyer, and afterward a dis- 
tinguished judge, and laid before him certain schemes 
for the furtherance of the plan which had been 
already submitted to Wilkinson ; and which insured 
to the people of Kentucky the free navigation of the 
Mississippi, and the right of deposit at ITew Orleans 
for any number of years that they might desire. At 
the same time? Mr. Guardoqui, the Spanish minister 
accredited to our government, then in 'New York, 
entered into treaty stipulations, with a similar object, 
and in a secret manner, with Mr. Brown, territorial 
delegate to Congress from Kentucky and subse- 
quently its representative when admitted as a State. 

And while the uneasy excitement about the secret 
plans of Spain is spreading in Kentucky, and the 



OF THE J^nSSISSIPPI. 315 

more open propositions of Guardoqui are almost pub- 
lished. by Brown — Avliile the people are also vexed 
and harassed with their interminable series of con- 
ventions to no purpose — the object of the Spanish 
court is nearly gained by Mr. Jay. This negotiator 
lays before the confederate Congress a proposal, not 
to give up the principle of the right to navigate 
the Mississippi, but to cede the exercise of it for 
twenty years, in consideration of certain advantages 
offered in return. The seven northeastern States 
earnestly favor the scheme ; but nine States being 
required to adopt it, it fails. While it is in agitation, 
however, the wrath of the Kentuckians becomes so 
hot against the I^ew Englanders, for this selfish dis- 
regard of the interests of the "West, that they become 
almost ready to sever all connection with the Union, 
and to set up an independent sovereignty within 
the great valley. 

Had this project prevailed in Congress, it is ex- 
ceedingly probable that the after-progress of this 
country would have been much hampered and entan- 
gled by the indefinite complications which would 
have sprung from the establishment of a rival 
commonwealth beyond the mountains. As it was, 
the bitter feelings which the scheme engendered 
toward I^cav England remained strong for many 
years, and the name of Jay was for a long time 
almost infamous in the popular mind of Kentucky, 



316 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

as having been connected with what they appre- 
hended to be a treacherous and unscrupulously selfish 
scheme to sacrifice them and their future for the 
advantage of a distant section of the country. Yet 
Jay had never for a moment contemplated the re- 
signation of tlie right to navigate the Mississippi. 
Indeed he would have been the very last man in the 
nation to yield a single jot of principle or of justice, 
to infiict a wrong, or to distribute benefits unfairly. 
His sole error was the universal one of under-esti- 
mating the j^rospective growth of the common- 
wealtlis of the Yalley. So far was he from any 
improper pliancy on this point, that he had stead- 
fastly supported the right to the river navigation, 
both during the war and after it, in defiance of all 
the tortuosities and intrigues which European diplo- 
macy could bring to bear upon him, and of tlie large 
offers of pecuniary assistance and threats of alterna- 
tive desertion which were constantly presented by 
the court of Spain as inducements toward the grant- 
ing of what we sought. But the m-asses of the 
people, however sure their " sober second thought," 
are little competent to judge of the conduct of a 
negotiator in a foreign land, in difficult times, who 
must look at the needs and rights, not of one section 
of his country, but of all ; and though Jay, now a 
historical character, has long justly held a lofty and 
honored place am^ong our Revolutionary heroes, in 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. g-j^T 

the hearts of Kei^tuckians, as well as all others of his 
countrymen, Ins spotless name was long a by-word 
and a hissing among them. 

So guarded were the words and actions of the 
advocates of an independent government in Zen- 
tuckj, that even now it cannot be demonstratively 
proved that they bad actually agreed with Spain to 
establish it. Still it is known that one or two of 
them received Spanish pensions; and there can be 
no reasonable doubt that Wilkinson, Brown, Sebas- 
tian, Innis, and a few more, did earnestly desire such 
an independent government, probably from the 
double desire for political power and position for 
themselves, and whatever pecuniary gains they could 
e^ctort from the Spanish government. It is certain 
that they pushed their plan to the furthest point pos- 
sible, without instant ruin to their own prospects in 
i^entuckj. 

I proceed with the story of the Spanish intric„es 
though out of strict chronological order. Caron- 
delet's negotiation with Judge Sebastian throuo-b 
Thomas Power, was brought to an end in n95 by 
the treaty of October of tkat year, with Spain, which 
secured the navigation of the Mississippi. Two years 
afterward Power came again to Kentucky with a 
plan from Carondelet for forming an independent 
government west of the mountains. ITie public 
mind was to be prepared by newspaper articles ; the 



:18 



sclieme aided by Spain witli men and arms. Tliis 
proposition was submitted to Sebastian, to Tnnis, to 
I^icliolas, and to Wilkinson, and was decidedly dis- 
couraged by all ; not as treasonable or unpatriotic, 
but merely as impracticable under the circumstances. 
Wilkinson, however, intimated that if lie should be 
appointed governor of Natchez, for Spain, lie might 
be able to proceed in some plan of the kind. Power 
returned to ISTcav Orleans with this answer ; and thus 
ended, as lar as is now known, any actual attempts 
by Spain to dismember our Union. Sebastian, how- 
ever, received a Spanish pension of two thousand 
dollars a year, until 1800. 

The story of the "West after the Revolution would 
not be complete without some reference to the med- 
dlesome and impertinent endeavors of revolutionary 
France to reap in her turn some advantage among 
the hardy and excitable population of the new trans- 
AUeghanian State. There was no part of the United 
States where the French nation received more love or 
sympathy than in Kentucky. Her generous aid in the 
dark days of our own contest with England were 
gratefully remembered ; and her magnificent attitude 
of successful defiance to the banded powers of 
Europe who sought to beat down her newly-estab- 
lished republican government, was enthusiastically 
admired. That crazy democat Genet, the French 
ambassador, deluded by tlie triumphant progress 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 6VJ 

wliicli he made througli the country, believing that 
he conld wield the moral and physical power of the 
United States in aid of France in the contest be- 
tween herself and England and Spain, sent four emis- 
saries into Kentucky, to raise two thousand men, 
and aj)point a general, descend the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi in boats, attack the Spaniards in Louisiana, and 
bring them under French authority. General George 
Eogers Clark, the hero of Kaskaskia and Yincennes, 
now considerably fallen in social and political posi- 
tion, was so imprudent as to consent to receive the 
supreme command of this chimerical army, with the 
long-tailed title of "Major General in the armies of 
France, and Commander-in-Chief of the French 
Revolutionary Legions on the Mississippi." The 
work of enlistment went vigorously forward. Demo- 
cratic clubs, humble imitations of the Jacobin clubs 
of France, were established over Kentucky, and 
grew rampant with denunciations of the federal gov- 
ernment ; of the Spanish treachery in closing the 
Mississippi ; of tlie vile tricks which "Washington and 
Jay were contriving to unite this country and Eng- 
land again t France ; of the tyrannical excise act. 
The new State was in a perfect ferment of disloyal 
and fanatic excitement. There was much con-es- 
pondence amongst the Federal and State officers 
respecting these military schemes. President Wasli- 
ington. Governor Shelby, and General Wayne wrote 



320 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

backward and forward. Depeau, one of the French 
agents, wrote an extraordinary letter to Gov. Shelby, 
in very French English, intended as a courteous 
announcement of his business, and an invitation to 
join in it. Shelby was even so much swayed from 
his usual straight-forward common-sense as to write 
to Gen. "\Yayne, in substance, that he had great 
doubts whether he could consistently endeavor to 
stop any Kentuckian or Kentuckians who should 
merely set out to leave the State with arms and pro- 
visions. Washmgton, who could not see the force of 
such reasoning, laconically ordered Yfayne to garri- 
son Fort Massac, on the Ohio, and to do what else 
might be necessary to stop this muster of fools. The 
Democrats, on this, grew more excited than ever. 
They called a convention and passed some resolutions 
full of bitter enmity to the general government ; and 
this convention took measures to call another, whicli 
squinted hard in the old direction of separation from 
the Union. But just in the nick of time the news 
came that the French Republic had recalled Genet, 
and disapproved and disavowed his acts. This pricked 
the bubble. Lachaise and Depeau, the chief French 
agents, instantly lost their authority, and disap- 
peared. Gen. Clark lost his long title and liis mili- 
tary command. The officers and soldiers of the in- 
tended army lost the generous grants which their 
French friends had lavishly promised them, of lands 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 321 

wliicli tliey did not own. And tlie public mind, 
losing so many and promising subjects for excite- 
ment, grew at once quite calm. 

While Carondelet's intrigues were still proceed- 
ing, and while the democratic and federal quarrel 
w^as yet hot and fierce in Kentucky, the unpopular 
administration of Washington was succeeded by the 
actually hateful one of Adams. In the new govern- 
ment the people of Kentucky had little confidence, 
and entertained for it still less respect ; for they w^ere 
convinced that it w^as unfriendly to them. ISTever- 
theless, Kentucky had been admitted as a State ; and 
a treaty had been formed with Spain, by which tlie 
right of navigating the Mississippi for tliree years liad 
been obtained, as well as the right to deposit mer- 
chandise in I^ew Orleans for j)urposes of commerce. 
But before this period expired, the Spanish governor 
of Kew Orleans shut the port, and refused the -pcv- 
mission agreed upon by the treaty. For even after 
the organization of the new^ State, the scheme of 
wooing her from her attachment to the confederacy 
was still contemplated. Then came the alien and 
sedition laws, ill-judged and oppressive enactments, 
which awakened tumult and confusion throughout 
the country, especially in Kentucky and Yirginia. 
The former, irritated by their enactment, took the 
first step in that system of nullification, afterward so 
strangely put forward again by South Carolina. By 
14* 



322 



a series of resolutions passed by lier legislature, iu 
1798-9, she denied the right of the general govern- 
ment to interfere in matters of private State rights 
and authority. 'No State of all the country was so 
addicted to the principles of Jefferson, perhaps ; it 
might be said, no people ever worshipped a dema- 
gogue in the form of a politician as did the Iventuck- 
ians Jefferson. And accordingly, they repudiated 
the doctrine of Adams and his congress, and passed a 
set of resolutions, drawn up by Jefferson with his 
own hand for the purpose. Tlius did Kentucky de- 
file its statute book with a direful blot ; a stain which 
it has taken long years of fealty to the Union, to the 
federal authority, the united central power of the 
Republic, to wipe out. And no lapse of time will 
remove the spot from her history. The written vrord 
remaineth. The resolution in the book will forever 
tell of the folly that placed it there. Let us hope 
that the lesson will not be lost upon her sister States. 

Thus goes on the muddy, crooked stream of poli- 
tics ; Spain intriguing still ; England dispatching her 
emissaries from the I^orth with the hope of harassing 
the Kentucky people — and they yet retaining, though 
not without doubt and difficulty, integrity toward the 
confederacy. It is time for me now to j)ass from this 
political part of my subject, and to return and trace 
downward another line of history. 

As I have said, the Indians suspended their liostili- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 323 

ties for a brief period after tlie close of the Eevolu- 
tionaiy struggle. Finding that England had made 
no j)ro vision for them in her treaty with the colonies, 
they resumed hostilities after a more fearful sort than 
had ever been seen before. By the treaty between 
England and the United States, the former was to 
relinquish all fortresses within our territory after the 
boundary line had been run — the line which is now 
the northern boundary of the Union. But there v\^as 
also another stipulation : that English merchants were 
to be allowed to collect their dues and debts in this 
country precisely as before the Revolution. Vir- 
ginia, indignant at the carrying away of slaves by 
the British fleet, "nullified" this provision of the 
treaty, and prohibited by law the collection of British 
debts. England seized upon this pretext to retain 
her hold of the fortresses upon the northern border. 
So that her troops were yet stationed in certain forts 
in Michigan, northern Ohio, and Indiana ; and from 
these centres of operation and influence, the Indians 
were constantly supplied with arms and provisions, 
sometimes with advice and encouragement ; and were 
continually making descents upon the border settle- 
ments, hindering and almost absolutely preventing 
the settlement of the N"orthwestern Territory. 

Thus the people of Kentucky must be still on the 
war-path ; their cabins and block-houses burned ; their 
wives and children tomahawked and butchered as be- 



324 PIONEERS, niEAClIEKS AND PEOPLE 

fore. Let ns pause a moment to recount some of the 
incidents of this period, wliicli may be said to reach 
from about 1784 to the battle of the Fallen Timber, 
in lT9i. 

A man named Davis walks out one morning, and 
has only got a few steps from the door, when he turns 
round and finds an Indian between him and the 
threshold. Thinking to elude the savage, he runs 
round the house so as to enter before him ; but on re- 
turning finds that the cabin is filled with Indians, 
and he himself is hotly pursued by the one whom he 
had first seen. He rushes to a cornfield and suc- 
ceeds in concealing himself. Hearing no noise, and 
no shouts or screams from the cabin, and knowing that 
without arms he can do nothing for the rescue of his 
family, he runs at the top of his speed for -Q.Ye miles 
to a block-house occupied by his brother and some 
other settlers. These quickly sally out, return to Da- 
vis's house, find that no blood has been spilled ; and 
after great difficulty — for the Indians have taken every 
means to obliterate their traces — succeed in getting 
upon the trail. Following this with all speed, after 
a number of hours they succeed in overtaking the 
savages, who have still the wife and children of Da- 
vis with them. One of the children, a boy of eleven, 
is instantly thrown to the ground, as the Indians see 
his father and friends approaching, and the hair and 
skin from the top of his head skillfully removed hy 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 325 

that surgical process called scalping. The rest of the 
Indians, frightened at the crack of the rifles, take to 
their heels, leaving the remainder of the family in a 
sink hole by the side of the trail. The boy, spring- 
up, his head streaming with blood, cries out at the top 
of his voice ; " Father ! after them. ! Cuss those red- 
skins — they've got my liar P'^ This is an illustration 
of the spirit of the boys of that period. 

There was a redoubtable hunter and Indian-fighter 
of the name of Hart, whose quickness and keenness 
in the warfare of the woods had obtained him the 
name of Sharp-Eye from his Indian enemies. This 
man had performed a number of feats which had 
won him the unenviable distinction of the special 
hatred of these red people. Making a descent upon 
his neighborhood, secreting themselves over night, 
they attack his family as they are sitting at their 
breakfast one morning. An Indian levels his rifle 
and shoots Hart dead. The son, a boy of twelve 
years of age, grasps his father's rifle and sends a 
bullet through the Indian's heart. The other savages 
rush at the door in a body. The brave boy hurls a 
tomahawk and splits the skull of a second; drives 
his scalping-knife to the hilt in the heart of a third, 
and then — the party is a large one, and the contest is 
too imequal — they carry him off with his mother, 
rather proud of the achievements of the lad. A 
sister was killed on the journey ; but the boy and his 



326 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

mother, after being captives for some time, were ran- 
somed, and returned home. 

The spirit of the women of the country was of the 
same indomitable sort. The house of a settler was 
attacked just before the break of day. Hearing a 
noise outside, he incautiously opened the door and 
stepped out on the threshold, when he received the 
contents of six or seven Indian rifles. Falling across 
the entry, mortally wounded, his wife hastily pulled 
the body in, and closed the door, just in season to 
prevent the Indians from entering. They immedi- 
ately, with clubs and tomahawks, commenced to cut 
away the door. There were no firearms in the house, 
the settler having been so reckless as to be without 
them. They succeeded in breaking down one of the 
puncheons of the door and were pressing in. The 
bold wife had nothing but an axe ; but as one savage 
after another crawled through, she hewed him down 
with the axe, and drew him inside ; until four were 
dispatched. The other three, thinking almost any 
other plan more promising, now climb the roof and 
seek to descend the chimney. But female ingenuity 
is fertile in resources. There is only one feather bed 
in the house, and quick as thought she empties it into 
the bed of glowing coals in the fireplace. Two more 
of the Indians, suffocated by the pungent fumes, fall 
into the fire, and as they grovel in the live coals, she 
splits their skulls with her axe. The last of the party 



OF TnE MISSISSIPPI. o27 

tries the broken door again. As he is crawling 
through, the valiant woman gives him also a cleath- 
w^ound with her heavy weapon, and is left safe for a 
time and alone w^itli her great sorrow and her brave 
revenge, and with a ghastly company of eight bloody 
corpses — her husband and his seven murderers. 

There was for many years resident in the E^ortli- 
western Territory, in what became afterward the 
State of Illinois, a French Creole woman, born at the 
post of St. Joseph's, upon Lake Michigan. She was 
fortunate enough, during her singular life, to have 
three husbands, two of them Frenchmen and one 
American. She w^as known as Madame Lecompte, 
the name of her second husband, for that of the 
third she did not choose to keep ; a very vigorous, 
clear-minded person, capable of adajjting herself to 
circumstances, and well experienced in the customs 
of her Indian neighbors. Born in 1Y35, she so- 
journed some time in Michigan, and afterward 
descended to the French settlements in Illinois, and 
here took up her residence at Kahohia. Many times, 
when the Indians were making descents upon the 
French at the instigation of the English, this woman, 
who w^as much beloved by the savages, received pre- 
vious information from them that they were about to 
attack the settlements, in order that she might escape 
before the onslaught. The message alw^ays came in 
the night-time ; but instead of escaping, the bold- 



328 



hearted woman would instantly set out for tlie Indian 
camp, approach as day was breaking, and freely 
enter amongst their host, secure of respectful treat- 
ment. Sometimes she would stop with them one, 
two, or three days ; protesting, urging, reasoning with 
them, and inducing them at length to give up their 
foray. Returning to the settlement, with three or 
four hundred savage warriors, who had come out to 
burn and slay, she brought them, in friendly guise, to 
make their humble acknowledgments to the settlers, 
and to partake of their hospitality. Thus, in a dozen 
cases at least, did this brave woman, at Kahokia and 
Kaskaskia, prevent the destruction of the French and 
American inhabitants. She lived till 184:3, reaching 
the astonishing age of a hundred and nine years ; 
and the old chronicler. Governor Reynolds, whom I 
am so fortunate as to number among my personal 
friends, says, that to the last she was active in body 
and mind, and possessed her faculties and functions, 
intellectual and physical, at that advanced period, 
better than women of forty or fifty do now. She 
was accustomed to go out in all weathers, walking on 
the ice and snow, and in tlie open air, and health, 
longevity, beauty of complexion, were more certainly 
secured by this means, says Governor Reynolds, than 
by making pilgrimages " on fine, rich carpets, be- 
tween the piano and the air-tight stove." 

William Whiteside, a soldier of the Revolution, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 329 

wlio had fought bravely and well at the battle of 
Elng's Mountain, a strong athletic woodsman, of 
Irish blood, was in 1795 settled in the American 
Bottom, between Ivashaskia and Kahokia. Getting 
intelligence that a party of Indians was encamped in 
the neighborhood, with the design of stealing his 
horses, the fiery old warrior summoned a little band 
of fourteen men, his tried companions in many a 
combat with the savages, and set out to surprise 
them in camp. Surrounding them just before day, a 
furious charge was made, and after a severe combat, 
all the Indians were killed but one, who fled, and who 
was killed when he got home, by his tribesmen, for 
his cowardice. In this battle, Capt. Whiteside re- 
ceived a wound which he thought mortal, and which 
brought him to the ground. But he neither flinched 
nor feared ; and he lay there exhorting his men to 
fight bravely, not to retreat an inch, and never to 
permit the enemy to touch him after he was dead. 
One of his sons, who was unable to use his gun, being 
wounded in the arm, now came up, and on examin- 
ing his father's wound, discovered that the ball had 
merely glanced from a rib, and passing round, had 
lodged under the skin near the spine. He quietly 
drew his butcher-knife and cut out the ball, as he 
would out of a tree, merely remarking in a dry way, 
" Father, you're not dead yet !" The old man, on 
reflection, thought so too ; and jumping to his feet. 



330 PIONEEES, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

cried out, " Boys, I can fight the Indians yet !" and 
rushed again into the figlit. 

I shall not delay to give details of the incessant 
border barbarities of the Indians ; nor of the expedi- 
tions which, one after another, went forth against 
them. After a considerable jDcriod, the general 
government undertook the defence of the western set- 
tlements. I need not detail the adventures, the suffer- 
ings, the defeats and degradation of the hapless hosts 
of Harmor and St. Clair ; nor the splendid triumphal 
progress of Anthony Wayne ; nor the decisive vic- 
tory gained by him in the great battle of the Fallen 
Timber, which reduced the belligerent tribes to a 
condition of humble, though unwilling submission. 
But I will take time to narrate a few circumstances 
of individual adventure in Wayne's army, which 
will serve as additional illustrations of the character 
of western woodsmen of that day. 

Attached to Wayne's army w^as a small body of 
scouts, whose business it was to range up and down 
the woods in front and flank of the line of march, 
familiarize themselves wdth the movements of the 
savages, and every now and then to arrest some 
Indian and bring him to the camp, that the general 
might get his news at first hand. The head of these 
scouts was Captain William Wells, who had asso- 
ciated with him a man named Miller, another named 
McLennan, and three otheji's. These, while in camp. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 331 

were gentlemen at large, and no duties devolved 
upon tliem ; but when tliey were on tlie war-patli 
their occupations were of a sufficiently hazardous 
description to make np for former ease. In 1793, 
Wayne had sent out Wells, with Miller and McLen- 
nan, for the purpose of catching an Indian. They 
proceeded northward in the direction of some Indian 
towns. When yet at a distance, they heard a sound 
of merry-making ; and approaching an open glade in 
the wood, found three Indians seated near its centre, 
cooking venison, laughing and talking at leisure. 
The three spies were too distant to rush in upon 
them ; and it was necessary to take one of them alive. 
They therefore skirted along the timber till they 
came opposite to the point from which they Iiad first 
discovered the savao:es. Here there was a fallen 
tree ; and creeping along this mitil they were safely 
ensconced between the branches, it was arranged 
that the spy on the right should shoot the Indian on 
the right ; he on the left should pick his man in the 
same way, w^hile McLennan, who was in the middle, 
and the fleetest man in the party, w^as to run after 
the third Indian, and seize him. The fire was given, 
the two Indians fell dead, and, as was expected, the 
middle one took to his heels with all dispatch, 
McLennan after him. The smoke had not cleared 
away before the two men w^ere seen bounding along 
at tlie top of their speed. ISTear at hand was a 



332 PIONEEES, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

stream of water. The Indian, seeing McLennan 
gaining on liim, ran to the river, and plunging over 
a bluff, twenty feet high, landed in a deep quagmire. 
McLennan, without pausing, sprang over him ; and 
up to their breasts, as they stood, both mired fast, 
but within reach of each other, a desperate struggle 
ensued. The knife and tomahawk were drawn, and 
the two foes were on the point of a bloody conflict, 
when the other two spies came up, and burst into a 
hearty laugh at the absurd phase of the spectacle. 
The Lidian, seeing that there was no chance for him, 
dropped his weapons and surrendered. The others 
extricated them from their embarrassing attitude; 
and while the two who had been in the morass were 
washing off the dirt, it was discovered that the man 
who had thus been seized, was not really an Lidian, 
though burned and browned so as to be almost of 
their tawny complexion ; but that he bore indubit- 
able marks of white origin. Miller liad himself been 
a prisoner with the Lidians many years, having been 
captured in his early youth ; and had left a brother, 
Christopher Miller, in their hands. A strange sus- 
picion flashed upon him. It was years since he had 
seen his brother. The white Indian, however, was 
sulky, and refused to answer any questions, until 
Miller, riding up — for they had placed him upon a 
horse — called him by his Indian name. The man 
flushed, turned crimson, and asked, " How do you 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 333 

know my name ?" Here was the trutli revealed as 
by a mii-acle. The brothers' hands had been provi- 
dentially stayed from shedding each other's blood ; 
and after long and urgent entreaty, pleading even 
with tears in his eyes, Miller succeeded in winning 
Christopher from his w^ld Indian ways ; and at 
length induced him to join their scouting and forag- 
ing party, of Avhich he became one of the most reso 
lute and indomitable members. 

Thus reinforced, and with two other men, they 
were sent on a subsequent occasion, by General 
Wayne, to take other prisoners. They had pro- 
ceeded thirty-five miles from Fort Defiance, in the 
direction of Maumee. This was in the year 1794, 
just before the great battle in wdiich Wayne was vic- 
torious. Arriving within two miles of the English 
post, they rode boldly into an Lidian town near to 
where Fort Meigs was afterward built, as if they 
had come from the British fort ; and being painted 
and decorated with feathers in Indian style, although 
they met Indians constantly, as some of them could 
speak the language, they were supposed to be none 
other than a party of Indians. In an out-of-the-way 
place, beyond the town, they seize an Indian warrior 
with his squaw, gag and handcufi" them, tie them 
upon the saddle, and turn toward the American 
camp. Presently they reach the neighborhood of a 
large Indian encampment; and now^ these seven 



334: PIONEERS, PF.EACHERS AND PEOPLE 

reckless men make a detour, and gain tlie brush at 
some distance, where they conceal their prisoners, 
and then resolve to return and have a bout with the 
Indians in camp. It is understood by previous 
arrangement that they are to ride in as if they were 
all Indians, and enter into an amicable conversation 
w^ith any parties about the fires, in order that they 
may gain all the information possible. Sitting quietly 
on their saddles, every man with his hand on the 
trigger of his rifle, they coolly ride into the camj) as 
agreed. They have an agreeable chat of fifteen or 
twenty minutes with the Indian warriors, who are 
loitering around the fires ; when an old chief sitting 
upon ■ a log, whispers to his friends that there is 
something suspicious about these men ; they don't 
seem Indians. Wells overhears the remark ; the 
spies discharge their rifles each into the breast of an 
Indian, and then putting spurs to their horses, and 
lying down on their necks so as to present less mark 
for their enemy's fire, they ride full speed into the 
forest, whooping and hallooing as if they were 
demons. The Indians however, grasp their rifies 
.and deliver their fire, in confusion and bewilder- 
ment. Yet before the spies have got beyond the 
circle of the firelioht McLennan is shot shrousrh the 
shoulder, and "Wells, receiving a bullet in his arm, 
loses his rifle. May, a third man, was taken prisoner ', 
the others, after a dangerous and fatiguing journey, 



OF THE MISSISSirPI. 335 

arrived safely at camp. And this was a fanny freak ; 
an amusing adventure ; a specimen of tiie sport 
relislied by the rugged Borderers of that old day. 

McLennan was the fleetest runner in Wayne's army ; 
doubtless one of the fleetest that ever lived. It is 
told of him on good authority, that when tlie 
army was encamped at Greenville, he took a short 
run, and sprang over a camp wagon which rose, with 
its cover on, just nine feet from the ground. 

Captain Wells, the chief of this band of daj-ing 
men, met an appropriate fate in a characteristic 
manner. Long after Wayne's expedition, during 
the Indian hostilities in 1S12, he held the official 
position of interpreter to the Miami nation. The 
Pottawatomies had surrounded the American garrison 
of Fort Dearborn, where Chicago now stands; and 
Wells, whose niece was wife to the commander, 
Major Heald, had gone thither with the intention 
of aiding the troops to escape to Fort Wayne. But 
he was excessively obnoxious to the Pottawatomies, 
who were also much enraged at finding that the gar- 
rison of Fort Dearborn had destroyed their powder, 
instead of delivering it up as was agreed. A little 
after the garrison, according to a sort of capitula- 
tion between the officers and chiefs, had set out on 
their journey to Fort Wayne, the irritated Potta- 
watomies attacked them. Wells, seeing instantly 
that there was no hope, and knowing that if 



336 nONEEKS, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

lie were taken prisoner, he would be subjected to 
long and dreadful tortures, wetted powder and 
blackened his face in token of defiance, and mount- 
ing his horse, began to pour out on the Indians all 
the abusive and insulting terms he was master of. 
This, as he had intended, soon irritated them to such 
a pitch that one of them shot him down from his 
horse, and then springing upon him like a beast, cut 
him open, tore out his heart and ate it. 

And now I come to the last portion of my subject. 
In the early years of the present century there sud- 
denly arose from the midst of peace and security, a 
danger that threatened anew the existence of the 
country, by aiming at the disruption of its territory. 
This was the result of certain plans of a man who 
had served with credit in the Revolutionary war, 
rising to the rank of colonel ; of a singularly acute, 
and shrewd intellect, fascinating address, perfect 
courtesy of manner, profoundly acquainted with 
human nature, a quick reader of the faults and follies 
of all about him, as haughtily and imscrupulously 
ambitious as Lucifer himself; long a most able and 
successful politician ; once Yice-President, after failing 
of the Presidency itself only by a few votes ; fallen 
however, in consequence of that failure in the esteem 
of his party ; the deliberate and delighted murderer 
of the greatest statesman our country ever boasted ; 
but now an outlaw by proclammation, quite bank- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 337 

rupt in fortune and in political hopes, and ready for 
any design, how bad or desperate soever, which ex- 
hibited any chance of regaining wealth and power. 
For between fame and notoriety, Aaron Burr seems 
to have no choice. 

Burr's plans were masked by a pretended enter- 
prise for colonizing a large tract of wild lands among 
the distant rivers and marshes of upper Louisiana, in 
which he held a nominal interest under the Spanish 
grant to the Baron de Bastrop. His actual design he 
most probably never fully revealed to any person. 
But the common belief is well founded that he in- 
tended to attack the Spanish possessions, and to carve 
out for himself some principality or magnificent 
estate somewhere in the West, between the Missis- 
sippi River and the Isthmus of Darien. Whether 
his empire was to be Mexico, Texas, or Louisiana, 
and how far his scheme included the territory of the 
United States, will probably never be known. 

Burr visited the West in two successive years, 
1805 and 1806 ; winning friends and partisans every- 
where, and by that strange personal magnetism 
which was, perhaps, his most remarkable character- 
istic, becoming especially a favorite among the 
ladies. Upon his second visit, however, he was 
arrested at the suit of Col. Joseph Hamilton Daviess, 
then U. S. attorney ; who, almost alone among the 
whole population of Kentuclv)^, was profoundly con- 

15 



338 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

vinced of the treasonableness of Burr's designs. 
Daviess is famous as an orator ; but far more deserv- 
ing of renown, it seems to me, is the impregnable 
moral courage and lofty rock-like steadfastness to liis 
convictions which he showed in the series of vigorous 
endeavors he made under circumstances the most 
discouraging, to insure the trial of a man whom he be- 
lieved a criminal. He was one of the very few federal- 
ists in Kentucky; and as such, all his public acts 
were of course bitterly censured, and his motives 
continually questioned. In the present instance, 
however, the bold attorney had not only to stand up 
under the weight of this political odium, whicli his 
powerful shoulders had already easily supported for 
years, but under the accumulated storm of obloquy, 
indignation, and ridicule, wdiich was liberally hurled 
against him from all sides, for his persevering attacks 
"upon a man of national reputation, whose personal 
and political friends filled Kentucky, and wdio num- 
bered among those who were either his very j)artners 
in crime, or his zealous followers in a supposed jus- 
tifiable political enterj)rise, numbers of the influential 
citizens of the District. 

Did the occasion permit, an interesting account 
might be given of the exciting legal contest which 
began on the third of J^ovember, 1806, before the 
United States District Court, of which Harry Innis, 
previously a fellow-intriguer of Benjamin Sebastian 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 339 

with the Spaniards, was judge. A motion by Daviess, 
for process to bring Burr up to answer a charge of 
misdemeanor in organizing a military expedition 
within the United States, against a friendly power, 
opened the case. The motion was denied, but was 
granted a short time afterward, at Burr's own re- 
quest. Twice, a day was fixed for the trial, and 
each time the resolute attorney found himself, to his 
keen mortification, obliged to ask an adjournment on 
account of the absence of an essential witness. The 
second time Daviess requested the Court to keep the 
jury impannelled until he could bring up the recusant 
by cajpias / and while Burr, who had, on the former 
occasion made a dignified and most telling address 
to the Court, remained silent, Daviess was opj)osed 
by Henry Clay, Burr's counsel ; and for hours to- 
gether these celebrated "orators battled with each 
other upon the legal question, but illuminated and 
pointed their arguments with brilliant rhetoric and 
sharp and personal assaults and rejoinders, which 
held the crowded court-room in the profoundest 
silence. 

Innis refused to keep the jury without business ; 
and Daviess, to gain a little time, sent to them an in • 
dictment against the absent witness, John Adair, 
which they found not a true bill. He then moved 
to compel his attendance by attachment, but was 
again bafiled ; and the case going to the grand jury, 



340 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

with the witnesses then present, Burr was triumph- 
antly acquitted by the throwing out of Daviess' bilL 
The friends of the victorious plotter gave a splendid 
ball in Franhfort in honor of the occasion, and 
Daviess' friends, rallying, followed it by another in 
his honor. 

Burr had only secured the services of Clay by a 
most sweeping and enormous falsehood. He assured 
him in the strongest and broadest terms that he 
neither entertained views, nor possessed friends nor 
means intended or calculated to disturb the govern- 
ment in any manner whatever ; and that he had 
signed no military commission, and owned no mili- 
tary stores or weapons; and to this vast lie he 
pledged his honor. The tremendous impudence of 
the fabrication will appear, when it is remembered 
that his military preparations had begun four months 
before, and that at the very moment of making it, 
the advance of his army, organized, armed, and pro- 
visioned, was on Blennerhassett's island, on the 
frontiers of Kentucky ; or even descending the Ohio. 

It was not long before the delusion which had so 
long obscured the Kentuckians, was thoroughly dis- 
pelled, and they did justice to the penetration and 
resolute perseverance of Daviess, whose reputation 
throughout the West rose to a higher pitch than ever. 
There are few public men who are not, at some 
period of life, called to pass through a similar ordeal 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 341 

of misunderstanding, perhaps almost ignominy. But 
to him who is in the right, the time of recompense 
always comes. The clouds do not always tarry about 
the mountain's side. They roll themselves up and 
shrink away in the sunshine, and the everlasting 
j)eak stands out in its grandeur, lifted high in the 
heavens, uninjured by the darkness that is past, and 
seeming even more magnificent at the withdrawal of 
its transient veil. 

Burr, leaving Frankfort at the conclusion of the 
trial, joined his forces, descended the Ohio and Mis- 
sissippi, and was arrested and his men dispersed 
near JSTatchez. He was taken to Washington, the 
capital of the Mississippi Territory, and without diflS.- 
culty found friends who gave bail in ten thousand 
dollars for his appearance at court. He appeared, 
moved unsuccessfully for a discharge, and apprehen- 
sive of the consequences of a removal before a higher 
court, fled away eastward by night. 

On the 18th of February, 1807, late at night, 
Nicholas Perkins, register, and Thomas Malone, clerk 
of the court, are playing backgammon in their cabin, 
in the little village of Wakefield, on the western 
verge of Alabama, when a knock is heard at the 
door, and on opening it, two travellers inquire of 
Perkins the route to Col. Hinson's. While he 
answers that it is seven miles away, by a difficult 
path and over a dangerous creek, his companion 



34:2 PIONEERS, PKKACnERS AND PEOPLE 

throws more j)Ine-wood on the fire, and the blaze 
now enables the inquisitive register to observe that 
the speaker has a keen, striking face, and ejes that 
flash and sparkle with wonderful brilliancy; that lie 
wears an old hat and coarse clothes, but remarkably 
handsome boots. The travellers ride on, and Perkins 
instantly assures his companion that the inquirer is 
Aaron Burr, and urges him to go with himself at 
once to Ilinson's and procure his arrest. Malone 
declines. The register, hurrying off to the sherifi*, one 
Brightwell, awakens him ; and they set out at once 
for Ilinson's, which they reach after a severe jour- 
ney. Perkins thinks best to stay in the woods, lest 
Burr should recognize him, and sends Brightwell 
into the house, who satisfies himself that they are 
right, but, for some reason, delays to take any steps 
for the capture. Perkins, after waiting shivering in 
the woods until he is tired, and hearing nothing of 
the sherifi", now makes the best of his way to Fort 
Stoddart, on the Tombigbee, commanded by Captain 
Edmund P. Gaines, where he arrives at sunrise. 
Gaines, on learning the news, at once sets out with a 
file of men, and about nine o'clock meets Burr, with 
his companion, together with Brightwell, the recreant 
sheriff, who seems to have been fascinated by Burr, 
and now to have been guiding him on the road to 
Pensacola ; from which port he would have sailed for 
Europe, to endeavor there to obtain new means foi 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 343 

liis intended expedition. Notwithstanding the vehe- 
ment eloquence with which Burr denounced the 
proclamations and proceedings for his arrest, and the 
ingenious mode in which he enlarged upon the 
responsibility of stopping travellers, the straightfor- 
ward young soldier marches him to the fort, and 
retains him there for some time, while he prepares to 
send him prisoner to Yirginia. During this time, 
Burr makes himself a favorite with an invalid bro- 
ther of the commander, with Mrs. Captain Gaines, 
an accomplished and lovely woman, daughter of 
Judge Harry Toulmin, and with every one he meets. 
After some weeks, Gaines succeeds in forming an 
escort to his mind, consisting of Colonel JSTicholas 
Perkins, wdio had caused the arrest, two United 
States soldiers, and seven or eight men chosen by 
Perkins as especially reliable, energetic, and unse- 
ducible ; and after a long and most fatiguing journey, 
all the hardships and dangers of which Burr endured 
without a complaint, they reached the settled country 
of the Atlantic seaboard. While passing through 
South Carolina, where Burr was still popular, and of 
which his son-in-law, Alston, was governor, he 
attempted to escape, leaping from his horse and 
appealing to the citizens whom he found assembled 
at a merry-making at one of the towns on the road. 
But Perkins, a tall and athletic man, seized Burr and 
flung him bodily into the saddle, and with one guard 



844 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE. 

holding his horse's bridle, and others urging the 
beast from behind, they hurried him onward ont of 
reiicli. In the revulsion of his disappointment at this 
failure. Burr, ordinarily so inaccessible to fear or sor- 
row, for once gave way to a violent outburst of grief, 
and even wept like a child ; and one of his guards, a 
kind-hearted man, wept with him. Burr was safely 
conveyed the remainder of the distance to Rich- 
mond; the story of his trial there, and his subse- 
quent varying fortunes, his obscure and evil life, his 
unhappy death, is sufficiently familiar to you. Tlie 
moral of his career has often been recited, but it wHl 
bear a repetition. The lesson is simple, but fearfully 
important ; and its weight is not lessened by any cii'- 
cumstance in the manners or the morals of our times. 
Burr was a man of splendid intellect, and of power- 
ful passions. He had both the magnificent machine, 
and vast motive power. But he was destitute of 
moral sentiment, or of religious feeling. He lacked 
the guiding and controlling hand that must measure 
the application of the force, and direct the working 
of the enginery. And without this, without the wise 
and just hand on engine and on helm, the magnifi- 
cence of the vessel only makes her ruin the sadder ; 
the power and speed of her movements only drive 
her with a more fearful crash u]3on the fatal rocks. 
Head without heart tends straight and fast to de- 
struction, and brings the awful fate of Aaron Burr. 



Lecture VIII. 



MANM m THE WILDERNESS; 



OK, 



THE OLD PREACHERS AND THEIR PREACHLXG. 



15^ 



MANNA m THE WILDERNESS ; 



THE OLD PREACHERS AND THEIR PREACHING. 

After the defeat of tlie English forces before 
Fort Duqiiesne Tinder the ill-fated Braddock, it was 
desired still to wrest that strong position from the 
grasp of the French, and General Forbes was placed 
at the head of an expedition to effect that object. It 
was thought fit, however, that he should be preceded 
by some person snfficientlj able and experienced to 
bring over the minds of the indomitable inhabitants 
of the wilderness from the canse of the French to 
that of the English. The person selected for this 
hazardous enterprise was a Moravian missionary, 
Christian Frederick Post. He had long been labor- 
ing among the Delawares on the Susquehanna, and 
had acquired a thorough knowledge of the Indian 
languages, and of their habits and customs. He was 
calm, simple-hearted, intrepid, and accustomed to all 
the perils he had now to face. Confiding himself 
and his cause to the hands of his Great Master, he 

84T 



348 PIONEEKS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

betook himself to tlie forest, attended by a little com- 
pany of savages. His negotiation was eminently 
successful ; and though his life was threatened again 
and again, he succeeded in returning safely to the 
settlements. By the wise and skillful efforts of this 
man, the Indians were completely won over to the 
cause of the English. The fall of Fort Duquesne 
was the consequence ; and the arms of the English 
were crowned with triumph. 

After the close of the war, in 1761, Post re- 
turned to his labor among the Indians, crossed the 
Alleghany Eiver, and found himself upon the 
Muskingum, in the now State of Ohio. Here he 
settled among the Delawares, whose language he 
knew, and among whose brethren he had already 
labored for many years. But the tribe among whom 
he now found himself, while a part of them were 
inclined to a peacable disposition toward the Eng- 
lish, were still in part exceedingly hostile ; and he 
found great difficulties in his way. These, however, 
he serenely met and overcame. Having taken pos- 
session of a piece of ground allotted him, he proposed 
to erect a cabin, for the double purpose of a home 
and a school-house, that he might instruct the savages 
and their children. As he commenced clearing the 
timber from this ground, some of the Indians in- 
quired his intentions. He told them that a mission- 
ary must live, and in order to eat, he must raise corn. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 349 

" Nay," said the Indians ; " the French priests with 
whom we are acquainted, to whose labors we have 
been accustomed, look fat and comely, and they raise 
no corn ; and if you be the servant of God, as you 
say you are, and as they say they are, your God will 
feed you, as he feeds them ; you can therefore have 
no large tract of ground to till. If you have a farm, 
other English will come and open farms, and then a 
fort must be built to defend you ; and then our lands 
will be taken away from us, and we shall be driven 
toward the setting sun." The logic of the Indians 
was excellent, and their power sufficient to sustain 
it, if it was not; Post had, therefore, to content 
himself with a small patch sufficient for a vegetable 
garden. Here, then, in company with the cele- 
brated Heckewelder, he commenced his labors. 

The war of Pontiac beginning in the following 
year, the two missionaries, warned of their danger 
by the simple-hearted Indian children of the forest, 
returned east of the mountains, and there remained for 
six years, when, together with David Zeisberger, they 
came back to the Muskingum, and laid the foundations 
of the town of Gnadenhutten, a memorable settle- 
ment of the good Moravians and their Indians. This 
was the first establishment of those devout and 
useful missionaries west of the mountains. Many an 
Indian's heart was won to the cause of the truth by 
their patience, constancy, and judicious humble 



350 PIONKEES, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

instructions; and flourishing out-stations began to 
grow np all around them. During all the Revolu- 
tionary struggle, the Moravians were successfully 
laboring toward the conversion of the Delaware 
Indians. But the towns they occupied were unfor- 
tunately just upon the frontier, between the whites 
upon the one side, and the Indians upon the other. 
The Wyandots and Shawnees, fiercest of all the 
hostile tribes of the ITorthwest, in making incursions 
upon the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania, 
must needs pass through the settlements of these 
Christian Indians; and the settlers in the western 
parts of those States, in attempting to make reprisals 
for the outrages perpetrated upon them, must also 
take the same road. They were thus feared and sus- 
pected by both parties ; and the British in the neigh- 
borhood of Detroit, at length determined that their 
settlements should be broken up, and, with or 
against their will, they must now be removed to the 
neighborhood of Sandusky. This they were loath to 
do, and would not voluntarily abandon their peaceful 
homes and firesides, their pleasant maize fields, and 
the sunny clearings around their comfortable resi- 
dences. But they were forcibly taken away by 
command of the British ofiicers. ^N'early a hundred 
of them perished in the winter of 1781-2, in the 
neighborhood of Sandusky ; and the survivors re- 
solved to return to their old settlements, and there 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. oOl 

gather in tlieir corn, wliicli had been allowed to 
remain out during the winter. 

A. company of settlers from the western part of 
Pennsylvania about this time resolved on an excur- 
sion into the Indian territory for the purpose of 
punishing the "Wyandots, who had been committing 
outrages within that State. About ninety of these 
men, under the command of one Col. Williamson, after 
two or three days' march from Fort Pitt, reached the 
peaceful settlements of our Christian Indians. The 
converts were abroad in the fields, men, women, and 
children, gathering in their corn. Seeing the white 
men approaching, and supposing them friendly, they 
came forward to meet them courteously, and cor- 
dially invited them to their homes. The whites told 
them that they had come for the purpose of convey- 
ing them for safe keeping to Fort Pitt. Some of the 
Indians had been there the preceding year, and had 
been treated with remarkable kindness by the com- 
mandant. To this proposition of the whites they 
therefore readily acceded, and collected themselves 
in the village. All the remaining Indians, who were 
scattered in various localities within a circuit of four 
or five miles, were also brouglit in. "When they 
were all gathered together, they were put under a 
guard, and the question was then put by the colonel, 
" Shall these Indians be put to death or marched to 
Pittsburg?" All in favor of sparing their lives 



352 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

were ordered to stej) out two paces in advance of tlie 
line as the detachment stood. Only sixteen men 
of the whole ninety took the requisite step. The 
vote was for death. The intelligence was communi- 
cated to those humble and simple-minded people, 
now imprisoned and helpless within their own dwell- 
ings, and they were told that with the morrow's 
dawn they must all perish. They begged for life, 
but their prayer was unheeded, save by that Ear 
which is ever open to the prayers of all. The white 
men were deaf to their pleadings, and even to the 
wailings of women and the innocent entreaties of 
little children. And on the morrow that company 
of men, with your blood and mine in their veins, 
Anglo-Saxon men, took those people, five and thirty 
men, four and thirty women, five and forty little 
children, laid them out on blocks of wood, and stand- 
ins: over them with their axes, clove their skulls in 
sunder ; one of the most atrocious, horrible, devilish 
deeds that was ever perpetrated upon the face of God 
Almighty's earth ! 

Fearfully enough was this black-hearted murder 
avenged by Him who watches the deeds of his recre- 
ant children. ISText year these same volunteers fitted 
out another expedition. They marched this time five 
hundred strong, intending not only to burn and lay 
waste the territory of the hostile Indians, but also to 
destroy those of the inoffensive Christian Indians who 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 



353 



yet remained. 1 am glad to say tliat most of them, 
diabolical miscreants as tliey were, fell victims either 
to the tomahawks of the hostile savages, or to the 
silent and nnrelenting power of the wilderness. Col. 
Crawford, who had been an old friend and agent of 
George Washington, and was unwillingly and unwit- 
tingly made commandant of this last party, was burnt 
alive with peculiarly frightful torments, by the Wjan- 
dots, by whom he was taken prisoner. 

The Moravian brethren were the first to bring the 
Word of Life and Truth into the vast region of the 
Mississippi Yalley ; always of course excepting the 
old Jesuit Fathers and other Catholic missionaries 
who came with the French. There are yet, in 
the western country, and have been ever since the 
time of those atrocious murders, descendants of the 
Christian Indians, the converts of the Moravian 
brethren ; and I believe there are yet some white 
Moravians in the eastern part of the State of Ohio. 

South of the Ohio, the earliest Christian denomina- 
tion to enter Kentucky as a field of labor, were the 
Baptists — a large and exceedingly influential sect in 
Virginia and Isovth. Carolina, from which States 
most of the early settlers of Kentucky came. While 
there were few preachers who came with the single 
purpose of preaching the Word, there were a good 
many who were licensed to administer the sacra- 
ments, or whose object was to instruct the young, or 



35i PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

like their secular companions, to take possession of 
the country, and to secure for themselves farms and 
estates. These were not long after followed by 
Presbyterian ministers and missionaries, who came 
here expressly for the purpose of preaching the Gos- 
pel. It is not my desire here to assume a sectional 
or denominational position. JSTevertheless, it is neces- 
sary to call special attention to the characteristics, 
peculiarities, lives, manners, customs, names, and 
reputations of some of the preachers of my own 
church, the Methodist. I am not to detract in the 
slightest degree from either the Baptists or Presby- 
terians, the two other pioneer churches in the wil- 
derness. Their case has been presented in literature. 
But the Methodist church has had comparatively 
little advocacy before the people at large. But little 
is known, outside of its own limits, of its operations, 
movements, or men ; or of their agency in the pro- 
motion of civilization and Christianity. And it is 
with these men that I am more familiarly acquainted, 
and as, for the major part of this lecture, I am to 
rely upon my own personal observation and acquaint- 
ance with living men, and with and of those who 
liave passed away from the scene of action within the 
last twenty years, it is both natural and necessary 
that I should principally speak of them. 

The Baptists did a noble and excellent work, as 
did also the Presbyterians, in the early times of the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 355 

"West. Tlie Methodist cliurcli was a younger cliurcli 
than these — its first reguhir preachers having hmded 
on this continent in 1770. Fourteen years after their 
first teacher, sent out by "Wesley, set foot in America — 
seven years after the first Baptist minister in Ken- 
tucky — and three years after the first Presbyterian — • 
they commenced penetrating the wilds of the Far 
West, and tlieir pioneer missionaries, James Haw 
and Benjamin Ogden, crossed the Alleghanies and 
entered the boundless tracts of Kentucky. Others 
rapidly followed him. At first there was much an- 
tagonism — a sort of pugnacious rivalry or " free 
fight" between these various denominations out in 
the West — nor has this yet quite passed away. There 
is an active, rough, resolute courage, independence, 
and pluck about the western people, which inclines 
them to close scufiiing and grappling, a sort of knock- 
down attitude visible through all the moods of their 
life ; and their clergy are not free from the same pe- 
culiarities. They were therefore great controversial- 
ists ; and there was an immense din about Baptism 
and Pedobaptism ; Free Grace and Predestination ; 
Falling from Grace and the Perseverance of the 
Saints, etc., etc. Brethren of difi'erent denominations 
often held what they called discussions or debates ; 
where one of one denomination challenged one of 
anotlier. Meeting together before the people, occu- 
pying a temporary pulpit in a grove, they would 



356 PIONEERS, PREACHEES AND PEOPLE 

thus treat — and maltreat — the doctrines and viewa 
of each other, to the eminent edification, and often- 
times the entertainment of the assembled multitude. 
The people, nevertheless, were somewhat insensible 
to the preached "Word during the first twenty years 
of its dispensation. They were absorbed by Indian 
wars, and by the pressing demands upon their labor, 
necessary to maintain pliysical existence in a new 
country. Soon afterward came in French infidelity 
with French politics ; and deism and atheism were 
openly avowed on every hand. Many of the principal 
citizens of the West were not afraid or ashamed to own 
themselves skeptical or infidels in regard to the old 
system of Eevelation. Thus the field which these pio- 
neer preachers were called to till was a hard and stony 
one; and they had much difl3.culty in pushing their way. 
The Presbyterians and Methodists found it neces- 
sary, toward the close of the last century, to conjoin 
their efforts and unite for the furtherance of the com- 
mon cause. This was in the southern part of the 
State of Kentucky. They held " union meetings ;" 
sacramental meetings, where the two denominations 
worked together, kindly and efficient yoke-fellows. 
Under these efforts the people at length became much 
excited on the subject of religion, and there then broke 
out, in the spring of 1800, the most extraordinary re- 
vival of religion that ever happened on this conti- 
nent, or perhaps in the history the church since the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 357 

Day of Pentecost. It was called the Cumberland 
Revival, or the Great Revival. It broke out at one 
of these sacramental occasions, when the Methodist 
and Presbyterian ministers were holding a two or 
three days' meeting, for the purpose of stimulating 
the attention of the people to the all-important sub- 
ject of personal holiness. At this, there were strange 
manifestations. The people were seized as by a sort 
of superhuman power ; their physical energy was 
lost; their senses refused to j)erform their functions ; 
all forms of manifesting consciousness were for the 
time annulled. Strong men fell upon the ground, 
utterly helpless ; women were taken with a strange 
spasmodic motion, so that they were heaved to and 
fro, sometimes falling at length upon the floor, their 
hair dishevelled, and throwing their heads about 
with a quickness and violence so great as to make 
their hair crack against the floor as if it were a team- 
ster's whip. Then they would rise up again under 
this strange power, fall on their faces, and the same 
violent movements and cracking noise would ensue. 
Such peculiarities characterized this first meeting. 

The meetings went on, and at length there was a 
grand convocation at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, where 
the leading Presbyterian minister was Barton W, 
Stone, afterward renowned in the ecclesiastical 
annals of the West, as the father and head of those 
" New Lights " who became subsequently followers 



358 PIONEEES, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

of Alexander Campbell, and a section of that body 
now called " Christian." Stone was then tlie Pres- 
byterian minister of Concord and Cane Kidge meet- 
ing-liouse. He appointed a sacramental meeting. 
The report of these peculiar doings spread so rapidly 
through Tennessee, Kentucky, Yirginia, and what is 
noAV Indiana, that peoj)le came sixty, seventy, a hun- 
dred, even tliree hundred miles to attend this meet- 
ing, and it is said that on one night there were not 
less than thirty thousand people present at the Cane 
Kidge ground. There were ]3i'esent eight or ten 
preachers of different denominations, standing up on 
the stumps of trees, fallen logs, or temporary pul- 
pits, all of them holding forth in their loudest tone — 
and that was a very loud tone, for the lungs of the 
backwoods preachers w^ere of the strongest. They 
roared like lions — their tones were absolutely like 
peals of thunder. The celebrated William Burke, 
who died in Cincinnati only a short time ago, was 
one of the principal orators on that occasion. He 
had not been treated, he thought, with courtesy by 
his Presbyterian brethren. He had arrived on the 
ground on Friday night, and was not asked to par- 
ticipate in any of the exercises on Saturday. Sunday 
morning came, and many friends crowded around 
him to know if he w^ere going to preach. He said 
that if he were invited he would, but that 
he had not been invited. Brother Stone wanted 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 359 

him to get up, and make an exj^ose of his doctrines. 
" My doctrines," said Burke, " I preach every day," 
— this he said with a good deal of vim — " they are in 
the books — ^go and read. If I am to make an expose 
of Methodist vicM^s, then you might be called upon 
for yours." Mr. Stone said he was satisfied; that 
that would do. Burke, however, was not satisfied, 
and as he was not asked to preach by the authorities 
of the ground, he took a stand on his own hook, a 
fallen log, and here, having rigged up an umbrella 
as a temporary shelter, a brother standing by to see 
that it performed its functions j)roperly,.he gave out 
a hymn, and by the time that he had mentioned his 
text, there were some ten thousand persons about 
him. Although his voice when he began was like a 
crash of thunder, after three-quarters of an hour or 
an hour, it was like an infant's. 

It is said that all these people, the whole ten thou- 
sand of men and women standing about the preacher, 
were from time to time shaken as a forest by a tor- 
nado, and five hundred were at once prostrated to 
tlie earth, like the trees in a " windfall," by some 
invisible agency. Some were agitated by violent 
whirling motions, some by fearful contortions ; and 
then came " the jerks." Scoffers, doubters, deniers, 
men who came to ridicule and sneer at the superna- 
tural agency, were taken up in the air, w^hirled over 
upon their heads, coiled up so as to spin about like 



360 



cart-wheels, catcliing liold, meantime, of saplings, 
endeavoring to clasp tlie trunks of trees in their arms, 
but still going headlong and helplessly on. These 
motions were called the " jerks ;" a name which was 
current in the West for many a year after; and many 
an old preacher has described these things accurately 
to me. It was not the men who w^ere already mem- 
bers of the church, but the scoffing, the blasphemous, 
the 2:>rofane, who were taken in this way. Here is 
one example : A man rode into what was called the 
"Eing Circle," where five hundred people were 
standing in a ring, and another set inside. Those 
inside were on their knees, crying, shouting, praying, 
all mixed up in heterogeneous style. This man comes 
riding up at the top of his speed, yelling like a 
demon, cursing and blaspheming. On reaching the 
edge of the ring, he falls from his horse, seemingly 
lifeless, and lies in an apparently unconscious con- 
dition for thirty hours ; his j)ulse at about forty, or 
less. When he opens his eyes and recovers his 
senses, he says he has retained his consciousness all 
the time — that he has been aware of what has been 
passing around — but was seized with some agency 
which he could not define. I fancy that neither 
})hysiology, nor pyschology, nor biology, nor any of 
tlie ologies or isms, have, thus far, given any satisfac- 
tory explanation of the singular manifestations that 
attended this great revival. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 3G1 

These meetings taking place in open woods, and 
attracting such immense multitudes, no provision 
could possibly be made for tliem by the surrounding 
neighborhood. People came in their carriages, in 
wagons, in ox-carts, on horses, and, themselves accus- 
tome>l to pioneer habits and lives, they brought 
their own food, commonly jerked meat and corn 
dodgers, and pitched their tents upon the ground. 

Such was the origin of camp-meetings. The first 
camp-meeting ever seen, after the Feast of Taber- 
nacles, was that upon the Cane Eidge, where the 
people came without the design of encamping, but 
where necessity required it. These meetings pro- 
ceeded for two or three years, and great was the 
overthrow which resulted to all forms of infidelity. 
Of course there also ensued great divisions and 
heart-burnings among the difi'erent denominations. 
The Baptist, as well as the Presbyterian and Method- 
ist churches largely participated ; and all these 
churches were split up more or less after the abate- 
ment of the first great excitement. A good many 
of the people converted in these meetings became 
Shakers. A body of Shakers who came from Phila- 
delphia and settled in Kentucky, received large 
recruits. One man, who had gathered about him 
what he call the twelve apostles, set off in search of 
the Holy Land, and died miserably of starvation on 
an island in the Mississippi. And various were the 
IG 



362 PIONEEESj PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

other fancies. One said lie held converse with the 
angels and spirits, not after the modern use of rap- 
ping on tables, but orally and immediately ; and that 
physical food was not absolutely indispensable to 
sustain his life. He also starved to death ; and then 
his church broke up. As I say, there were various 
opinions as to these fruits and consequences ; but I 
have been told by old men who have watched the 
current of affairs since then, for these fifty-five years, 
that the good results of that meeting were not to be 
calculated. 

I now come to a more particular consideration of 
some of the men concerned in this movement. The 
ministry of the Methodist church of the wilderness 
assumed the position and the responsibility of their 
calling, under the confident belief that each man of 
them was specially called, designated, and sent forth 
by the Holy Spirit of peace and power as an ambassa- 
dor for Christ. The churches decided upon the gifts 
and graces of the men ; settled, according to their 
best belief and conviction, whether the call be a 
real call. If their opinion coincided with his, he was 
then set apart for the sacred ofiice of the ministry, 
and sent forth. At the time of which I speak, he 
was sent forth to an office which was no sinecure. 
His field of labor was the world. The allowance, 
the limit of the salary which the discipline of the 
church allowed him to receive, was sixty-four dollars 



OF THE Mississipn. 363 

per annum, and that was to include all presents he 
might receive of yarn stockings, woollen vests, and 
homespun coats, together with wedding-fees. "What- 
ever he might receive, from whatsoever quarter, was 
to be counted up in this allowance of four-and-sixty 
dollars, and if the amount exceeded this, the sur- 
plus must be handed over to the church authorities 
for the use of the "poorer brethren. Out of these 
sixty-four dollars, he must provide a horse, saddle, 
wearing apparel, and books. West of the mountains 
sixty-four dollars was a sum hardly to be expected, 
either in silver coin of the realm, or in presents of 
any description. E^othing more was allowed a man 
with a wife than without a wife, for it was under- 
stood among the ministers of the old church, that a 
preacher had no business with a wife, and that he 
was a deal better without one. The practice in that 
respect has sadly changed. Mr. Wesley had such an 
experience of his own in the wife line, that he discou- 
raged marrying among the brethren; and Francis 
Asbury, who was the master-spirit of Methodism on 
this continent, was so absorbed in his work,^so en- 
grossed by it, that he discountenanced matrimony. 
He said, nevertheless, that it was the business of 
every living man, to support a living woman. He 
therefore gave one-half or two-thirds of his entire 
income, which was very small, to the support of an 
old woman, a distant cousin in England ; and when 



364 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

slie died, lie appropriated the sum to the support of 
some other woman. Further than that, in the direc- 
tion of matrimony, he never went. "When one of the 
young brethren was so unfortunate or so absurd as to 
link himself in matrimonial bonds, it was understood 
that he had better '' locate," in the language of the 
church, still retaining authority to preach, but pursu- 
ing some other calling as a means of support, and 
deriving none from the church. He retired from 
regular itinerant work, and became a local preacher. 
Thus did brother Asbury set the example to the 
younger brethren. McKendree, who was his succes- 
sor in the episcopate, in the same way discounte- 
nanced all interesting relations with the sisterhood. 

There was thus small encouragement, indeed, in 
the way of pecuniary support, w^iich these men had 
to look forward to. They were coming to the wilder- 
ness to face perils, want, weariness, unkindness, cold, 
and hunger; to hear the crack of the Indian rifle 
from some neighboring thicket, to feel the ball cut- 
ting the air as it whizzed past their ear, and perhaps 
to fall from the unerring shot of some skillful 
redskin. And if their lives were spared, by the 
guardianship of a good Providence, or the interposi- 
tion of his sjDecial care in their behalf, the bare earth 
in winter and summer was three-fourths of the time 
to be tlieir bed, their saddle their pillow, and the sky 
their coverlet. They labored without pecuniary 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 365 

compensation or support, preacliing the Gospel often 
at their own cost and charges ; and when applying for 
victuals or a shelter, often and often were they sternly 
or rudely denied it by a brother of some other deno- 
mination, so bitter were the prevailing feelings of 
party denominationalism. Thus they worked on, 
with no provision for their advancing years except 
the guardianship of the Master who had called them 
— wdth no prospective sunshine of affluence to cheer 
their downward path to the grave — with none of the 
comforts of this world, save the approval of their 
own consciences and the indwelling testimony of 
God's Spirit. Surely such an office was not a sine- 
cure ; and men who could make a respectable living 
in the craft of blacksmithing, farming, carpentry, 
or masonry, could hardly have gone into this work, 
if they had not felt the irresistible impulse of a spe- 
cial call. They were not, as a general thing, men of 
what we now call education. Book knowledge was 
very scant with them. They were thorough students 
of their Bibles ; and their Bibles they generally read 
upon their knees. It was a common habit with them 
to read the Good Book in the shelter of a thicket, or 
out upon the lonely prairie. When the snow was on 
the ground, the travelling preacher, awaking from 
his night's slumber as the first rays of daylight were 
breaking through the eastern sky, giving just enough 
light to see the page of the Sacred Book, would sel- 



366 PIONEERS. PREACHERS AND PEOPL'tf, 

clom saddle and mount his liorse till lie had per- 
formed his private devotions, kneeling there in the 
midst of the snow and ice where he had been sleep- 
ing ; would seldom proceed upon his journey till he 
had committed his w^ay and commended his soul to 
God, and had studied, at least three or four chapters 
of his constant companion and manual. They were 
diligent students of the holy Scriptures, and they 
were learned in hymns. They studied tlie hymn- 
book nearly as devoutly and constantly as the Bible ; 
and with these two, they had an arsenal from which 
they could bring forth weapons adapted to every 
emergency. There was another supplement to their 
Scriptures. This third volume, one which they con- 
stantly, carefully, devoutly perused, profoundly stu- 
died, w^as the ever-open volume of Human I^ature. 
They were well acquainted with men; they read 
their eyes, their countenances, their hearts, their con- 
sciences. 

From this analysis, you will readily conclude what 
was their style of preaching. They were earnest and 
forcible speakers. They felt that great issues were 
at stake, standing, as tliey so often did, before a con- 
gregation of three or four thousand. They felt that 
all this great company of men and women in a little 
time must be dead ; that perhaps this was the last 
time tliey should ever have the opportunity of speak- 
ing to them. The weight of souls was on them; 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 367 

they felt that the blood of these people might rest on 
their own souls, unless their full and immediate duty- 
was done to them ; therefore, most earnestly, and 
even passionately to warn, to counsel, to entreat, to 
admonish, to reprove, to win them by the love of 
Christ to be reconciled to God — this was the burden 
of their preaching. They were men of quick, intense, 
and profound emotions, of lively fancy, and vivid 
imaginations ; and before their inward eye was ever 
clearly pictured their expected final haven of repose 
and joy, the antithesis to this their present painful 
life of weariness and labor. And, upon the other 
hand, the dark and unfathomable abyss of perdition 
was open to them. 

They w^ere thorough students of other books than 
the Bible, when they had opportunity; and these 
were frequently, and even generally, of an imagina- 
tive description. Young and Milton were singularly 
intimate companions of these old wayfarers. Mil- 
tonic descriptions of perdition abounded in their 
preaching ; and the Judgment, with all the solemn 
array of the last Assize, was vividly delineated before 
them. And w^hile to our sober, cold, and calculating 
criticism, it might seem that their descriptions of the 
the good and bad world savored too much of a topo- 
graphical character — as if they had been travelling 
through certain countries, and were nov\^ giving a 
vivid detail of all they had experienced— while it 



368 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

miglit seem so to us, it did not to the people wlio 
listened to them. They were rude and ignorant like 
them ; unversed in books. They were stern in their 
denunciation of what they did not believe ; and rose- 
water sentimentalism, agreeable metaphysical disqui- 
sitions, a profoundly elaborate exegesis upon particu- 
lar passages of Scripture, would have gone but little 
way in influencing those congregations of back- 
woodsmen. I have read of a certain bishop who, 
on a text concerning the miracles at the Pool of 
Bethesda, said : " My beloved hearers, I shall in the 
first place speak to you of the things whicb you 
know, and I do not know ; second, of what I know, 
and you do not know ; third, of the things that 
neither of us know." There was another eminent 
prelate, who, upon reading his text, said : '' I shall 
first speak of the chronology of the subject, then its 
topography, and then its psychology." ITeither of 
these styles of preaching would have gone far with 
the backwoods people. Their earnest life, filled with 
necessities, and arduous struggles to supply them, 
must have appropriate religious food ; and these 
simple-hearted, firmly-believing preachers Avere just 
the ones to give it to them. And give it they did, 
witli right liearty good will. 

Tliere was an immense deal of vim and stamina in 
their method. They spoke loudly and with their 
whole body ; their feet and hands were put in requi- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 869 

sition as well as tlieir tongues and eyes. It was a 
very fierce, cutting, and demonstrative style of 
preaching, as you may fancy. With little opportu- 
nities to get u]) splendid discourses — for they had no 
studies but the woods, and no libraries but those of 
which I have told you — ^they had to make their ser- 
mons as they were travelling along the way — and a 
hard and rugged way it often was. 

Such a man was Bishop Asbury, to my mind one 
of the most important, if not the most important per- 
sonage in the ecclesiastical history of this continent. 
"With all respect to Jonathan Edwards, Dr. Dwight, 
Dr. Channing, and all the other eminent and pre- 
eminent men of New England — I have read them, 
and knew some of them — I think that Francis As- 
bury, that first superintendent and bishop of our 
Methodist church, was the most renowned and re- 
doubtable soldier of the cross that ever advanced 
the standard of the Lord upon this continent. 
Yet you will not find his name in a single history of 
the United States that I know of ; and it is a burning 
shame that it is so. He travelled for fifty years, on 
horseback, from Maine to Georgia, and from Massa- 
chusetts to the Far West, as population extended; 
journeying in that time, as was computed, about 
three hundred thousand miles. He had the care of 
all the churches ; was preaching instant in season 
and out of season ; was laboring indefatigably with 

16* 



870 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

tlie yoiiDg men to inspire and stimulate them ; winning 
back the lost and bringing amorphous elements into 
harmony, in a church which, when he began witli it, 
in 1771, numbered probably not fifty members ; and 
which, when he was an old man — he died in 1816 — 
mimbered, white and black, from Maine to California, 
and from far northwestern Oregon to sunny southern 
Florida, nearly a million of members. So vast a 
church did Francis Asbury build, almost solely by 
his own profound wisdom, untiring effort, and cease- 
less devotion ; and he did as much for building school- 
houses and colleges, erecting churches, establishing 
sound views of morality, and lofty purity in the forms 
of life ; for gathering and establishing in doctrine and 
discipline this immense body of Christians, now 
the most numerous in the country, having more by 
one-third of stated ministers, and more colleges; than 
any other two denominations in the land. That one 
who has done this should not have had his name 
even so much as named in a single school history in 
the United States, I say is a shame. 

This man was surrounded by men much akin to 
him ; for he seemed to infuse his spirit into all with 
whom he came in contact. One of his associates and 
friends, one of the young men w^hom he raised up, 
was afterward a famous preacher of eastern Ten- 
nessee — James Axley, a very renowned man in his 
dav; and another was James Craven. Many of 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 371 

those old preachers were bitterly opposed to whisky 
and slavery. Old brother Craven, when once preach- 
ing in the heart of Yirginia, said, " I^ow here are a 
great many of you professors of religion; yon are 
sleek, fit, good-looking, yet there is something the 
matter with you — you are not the thing you ought to 
be. Now you have seen wheat" — most of his 
hearri3 were farmers — "wheat which was very 
plunp, round, and good-looking to the eye; but when 
you weighed it you found it only came to forty-five 
or fo: ty-eight pounds to the bushel. There was 
someJiing the matter. It should be from sixty to 
sixty three pounds. Take a grain of that wheat 
between your thumb and your finger; squeeze it, 
and out pops a weevil. E'ow, you good-looking 
Christian people only weigh, like the wheat, forty- 
five or forty-eight pounds to the bushel. What is 
the matter ? When you are squeezed between the 
thnmb of the law and the finger of the Gospel, out 
pops the negro and the whisky bottle." Old father 
Axley, preaching on one occasion, cried out, " Ah, 
yes ! you sisters here at church look as sweet and 
smiling as if you were angels ; and one of you says to 
me, ' Come to dinner,' and I go ; and when I go, you 
say ' Sit down, brother Axley awhile, while I go about 
the dinner ;' and you go to the kitchen, and I hear 
something crying out, " Don't, Missus," and I hear 
the sound of slaj^s, and the poor girl screaming, and 



372 PIONEEES, PBEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

tlie sister whaling and trouncing Sally in tlie kitclien 
as hard as she can. And when she has performed 
this office, she comes back looking as sweet .and 
smiling as a summer's day, as if she had been saying 
her prayers. That is what you call Christianity, is 
it?" It was in this way that these old preachers 
preached. The style was adapted to the people. 
They understood this, where they could not have im- 
derstood profound disquisitions respecting original 
sin. Tliis old brother Axley was sent in 1806-7 into 
Attakapas County, Louisiana, to travel there as a 
missionary. He was about five feet eight inches 
in height, strong and sinewy, accustomed to all man- 
ner of exposure and suffering. Among this rude 
border populace, of whom a large component are 
French Catholics, he had not much to expect in the 
way of comfort. He had no money, was very hungry, 
and indeed reduced nearly to starvation, when he 
came riding up to a plantation. They knew him by 
his coat to be a preacher, and they wanted none such 
in their houses. The old gentleman entered and 
asked if he could have a dinner and supper and 
night's lodging. 

" No." 

The only persons present were a widow lady and 
some children and black j^eople. 

" No," said the w^oman, " you cannot ; we don't 
want any such cattle here." 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 373 

Here, then, was a prospect of sleeping another 
night out in the cold. He had nothing to eat, and 
perhaps he ran an actual risk of perishing by starva- 
tion. He thought of the lonely journey, and of the 
perils that compassed it. Then his faith lifted him 
to the better, brighter world of heaven, its rest and 
reward for the wayfarer ; and he thought of the good 
Father, and of the angels that are sent to succor and 
minister, and his heart presently filled with overflow- 
ing gladness ; and he struck up a hymn, for he was 
a great singer. These men were all great singers, 
and when they could not carry a point by speech, 
they often fell back upon a song : 

" Peace, my soul ! Thou needst not fear 
Thy great Provider still is near, 
Who fed thee last will feed thee still ! 
Be still, and sink into his will." 

He went on with his song, and, looking about him, 
saw that he was gaining ground. He sang three 
hymns, and by that time the woman and all the chil- 
dren and negroes were crowding to hear him, with 
tears in their eyes. 

As he concluded, the old lady shouted, " Pete, put 
up the gentleman's horse ! Girls, have a good sup- 
per for the preacher !" And thus the preacher was 
lodged and fed for a song. 

Axiey came to Baltimore to attend a general con- 



374 PIONEEES, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

ference in 1820. There was a dispute about a tecli- 
nical question — wliether presiding elders should be 
elected by preachers or not ; and there had been a 
great deal of warm, not to say hot discussion about 
it. Brother Axley was silent. He did not say a 
word, until at the end of the session, the bishop 
called upon him to offer a prayer. He knelt to lead 
the devotions, and began thus : " ]^ow, O Lord, thou 
knowest what a time we have had discussing, argu- 
ing, about this elder question ; and thou knowest 
what our feelings are ; we do not care what becomes 
of the team — it is only who drives the oxen." 

He used the directest mode of getting to the centre 
of a subject. He preached among a people who were 
sharpshooters, and who practised driving a nail with 
their rifles at fifty yards. And as they practised 
close and sharp-shooting with the rifle, so did he with 
his tongue. 

There is an old friend of mine, my first presiding 
elder, yet living in Illinois — Peter Cartwright — who 
was one of those old preachers in the "West, and has 
many of their peculiarities. I may give you one 
incident of this man's life, as a specimen of their 
physical courage and prowess ; for it was sometimes 
necessary for them to fight with carnal weapons, and 
many of them had obstinate combats with the rough 
pioneer people — and commonly came off victorious. 
Cartwright, in common with most of those early old 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 375 

preachers, was a strong opponent of slavery. E'ow 
the question was being canvassed in Illinois, between 
1S18 and 1823, whether this institution should be 
ingrafted upon the Constitution, when the State was 
applying for admission into the Union. The old 
gentleman resolved to remove to Illinois, and take a 
hand in the quarrel. He had been living in Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, and had preached there for a 
quarter of a century, when he was appointed to Illi- 
nois as presiding elder, and had a circuit from 
Galena on the northwest, to Shawnee-town on the 
south — a district nearly as great as the entire country 
of England. Around this lie was to travel once in 
three months, at a time when there were no roads, 
scarcely a bridge or ferry — and keep his regular 
appointments to preach, Sunday after Sunday, besides 
attending love-feasts, and administering the sacra- 
ments. Then, after preaching on the Sunday, he 
would generally announce a stump speech for the 
Monday, and call upon his fellow-citizens to come 
and hear the question discussed, whether slavery 
should be admitted or not. Of course, taking a poli- 
tical side, he was regarded as a politician, and there 
was a good deal of angry feeling about the old 
preacher. On one occasion, he rode to a ferry upon 
the Sangamon Itivcr ; the country about was rather 
thickly populated, and he found a crowd of people 
about the ferry, which seemed to be a sort of gather 



6ib PI0NEEK8, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

ing place for discussing politics. Tlie ferryman, a great 
herculean fellow, was holding forth at the top of his 
voice about an old renegade, one Peter Cartwright, 
prefixing a good many adjectives to his name and 
declaring that if he ever came that way he would 
drown him in the river. 

Cartwright, w^ho w^as unknown to any one there, 
now coming up, said ; " I want you to put me across." 

" You can wait till I am ready,'* said the ferry- 
man. 

Cartwright knew it w^as of no use to complain ; and 
the ferryman, when he had got through his speech, 
signified his readiness to take him over. The 
preacher rode his horse into the boat, and the ferry- 
man commenced to row across. All Cartwiight 
wanted was fair play ; he wished to make a public ex- 
hibition of this man, and, moreover, was glad of an 
opportunity to state his principles. About half way 
over, therefore, throwing his bridle over the stake on 
one side of the boat, he told the ferryman to lay 
down his pole. 

" "What's the matter ?" asked the man. 

" Well," said he, " you have just been using my 
name improper, and saying that if I ever came this 
way, you wT)uld drown me in the river. I'm going 
to give you a chance." 

'' Are you Peter Cartwright ?" 

"Yes." 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 377 

And tlie ferryman, nothing loatli, pulls in his pole, 
and at it thej go. Thej grapple in a minute, and 
Cartwright being very agile as well as athletic, suc- 
ceeds in catching him by the nape of the neck and 
the slack of the breeches, and whirls him over. He 
souses him down under the tide, while the compa- 
nions of the vanquished ferryman look on, the dis- 
tance insuring fair play. Cartwright souses him 
under again, and raising him, says : " I baptize thee 
in the name of the Devil, whose child thou art." 
He thus immerses him thrice, and then drawing him 
up again, inquires : " Did you ever pray ?" 

''ITo," answered the ferryman, strangling and 
choking and dripping in a pitiful manner. 

" Then it's time you did," says Cartwright ; " I'll 
teach you : say ' Our Father who art in Heaven.' " 

" I won't," says the ferryman. 

Down he goes under water again, for quite a time. 
Then lifting him out, " Will you pray, now ?" 

The poor ferryman, nearly strangled to death, 
wanted to gain time, and to consider the terrors. 

" Let me breathe and think," he said. 

" Ko," answers the relentless preacher, " I won't ; 
I'll make you," and he immerses him again. At 
length he draws him out, and asks a third time, 
'' Will you pray now ?" 

"I will do anything," was the subservient answer. 
So Cartwright made him repeat the Lord's Prayer. 



378 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

" l^ow let me up," demanded this unwilling convert. 

" 1^0," sajs Cartwright, " not yet. Make me three 
promises : that you will repeat that prayer every 
morning and night ; that you wdll put every Metho- 
dist preacher across this ferry free of expense ; and 
that you will go to hear every one that preaches 
within five miles, henceforth." 

The ferryman, all helpless, barely alive and tho- 
roughly cowed, promised ; and Cartwright went on 
his way. 

That ferryman joined the church afterward, and 
became quite an eminent and useful member. 

Peter Cartwright, I say, was my own presiding 
elder. This is a veracious story ; and I might go on 
for pages giving you anecdotes of these Methodists, 
their j)eculiar powers, their odd original ways, their 
methods, their perils, and their success. They were 
an urgent sort of people : very pressing, deadly in 
earnest — their souls were firmly convinced of the 
truth of what they were saying — there was no eva- 
sion, equivocation, or doubt about it ; they therefore 
spoke straight to the mark, and did what they had to 
do. They had their faults and their defects, no 
doubt. Who has not ? Doubtless they may have 
been lacking in niceties and elegances — the refine- 
ments and beauties of civilized society ; but they 
were adapted to their condition and exactly filled 
their station. It is much the practice to ridicule 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 3Y9 

ministers of tiie Gospel ; to treat them decently as it 
were out of pity, as debilitated beings, lialf-way be- 
tween women and children — with a kind of conde- 
scension and patronage. And the question is often 
asked, with what is meant to be tremendous em- 
phasis and overpowering sarcasm, " What have the 
ministers done ; and what are they doing now ?" I 
beg leave to say in their behalf that they ask neither 
patronage nor condescension ; neither compassion nor 
pity. They are able to do their own work, and have 
done it ; and if your country along this Atlantic sea- 
board fails to furnish abundant and superabundant 
evidence of their possession of the noblest elements 
of the ministerial character — sublime courage, indo- 
mitable energy, daring self-forgetfulness, lofty, ar- 
dent, absorbing, and efficient Christian piety — then I 
say go west of the mountains, and in those noble 
pioneers who bore to the starving and perishing mul- 
titudes in the wilderness the means of grace — who 
hastened when most need was, not waiting for mere 
human helps, bringing manna, such as was at hand, 
and amply sufficient for spiritual food, here and here- 
after — go and find among them some of the sublimest 
elements of human character that this or any other 
country ever furnished. These constitute a most com- 
plete and unanswerable refutation of the mean, and 
base, and slanderous insinuations which are so unhap- 
pily current throughout a large portion of our society. 



380 



Perhaps I cannot more appropriately conclude this 
lecture than by giving a hasty summary of the life 
and character of one of the more prominent of the 
early western preachers ; and for the same natural 
reason already alleged, my instance will be taken 
from among those of the Methodist denomination. 

Of Bishop Asbury I have barely spoken, and of 
his abundant labors. That mere mention must on 
this occasion suffice. 

Peter Cartwright, also already alluded to, a man 
yet enjoying a green and vigorous and useful old age, 
and one of the most characteristic and efficient of the 
western pioneer preachers, was born in Amherst 
County, Yirginia, in 1785, the son of a Kevolutionary 
soldier; was taken to Kentucky by his parents a 
few years afterward, when they settled there; and 
was brought up in Logan County, a district so wild, 
wicked, and infested with desperadoes and refugee 
criminals, as to be popularly known in that region as 
" Kogues' Harbor." A strong, active, sharp-witted, 
jovial young fellow, he grew up a horse-racer and 
gambler, in embryo at least, and went on until he 
was sixteen, in the high road to all the vices of that 
rude and lawless period and community. Then he 
was suddenly converted, with one of the inexplicable 
convulsive changes which we hardly dare consider or 
seek to analyze, lest on one hand we find delusion, or 
on the other prove deficient in reverence for the ope- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 381 

rations of the Holy Spirit. He sold his race-horse, 
burned his cards, fasted and prayed, read the Bible, 
and after laboring under fearful anguish for months, 
at last, at one of the numerous camp-meetings held 
in consequence of the great gathering at Cane Eidge, 
found peace in believing, by another revulsion as sud- 
den as that which had plunged him into an agony of 
remorse and dread three months before. He joined 
the Methodist church in 1801 ; that body then num- 
bering, in the Mississippi Yalley, about two thousand 
five hundred souls, all told. It contained in 178T 
just about ninety-five souls. ITow it contains, within 
the same territorial limits, not less than three quar- 
ters of a million. 

Cartwright was licensed as an exhorter in 1802, 
and as a preacher six years afterward. From that 
time until this, for more than fifty years, he has been 
a steadfast and most efficient laborer in his chosen 
field. The brief summary which he gives in his auto- 
biography — one of the most entertaining books ever 
written — of the totals of his work, may be condensed 
somewhat as follows : His entire loss by non-receipt 
of the regular Methodist allowance — formerly eighty 
dollars a year, all over that sum to be handed over 
to the church — and by robbery, casualties, etc., 
$6,000 ; extras received to ofiset against this, $2,000 ; 
amount of money given in charity, etc., $2,300 ; 
number received into the church, 10,000 ; number 



baptized, cliildren and adults, 12,000; funeral ser- 
mons preached, 500 ; total number of sermons 
preached, at least 14,600. 

The crowded years of this long and busy life were 
marked from week to week wdth the strangest occur- 
rences, the natural results of the wild unfettered 
thoughts and life of the West ; often most grotesque 
and at first sight coarse, and even ridiculous, silly 
or absurd to an eastern man ; and yet requiring but 
a brief consideration to discover how peculiarly fit 
and proper were the rough repartees and even the 
comical tricks, practical jokes, and ready physical 
force with which this hardy soldier of the church 
militant upheld his authority, or silenced his oppo- 
nents at camp-meetings, or in controversy with the 
ignorant fanatics, the deceivers, and the rabid secta- 
rians of his rugged field. 

When a Baptist preacher was drawing off his con- 
verts, he drove him away by joining his band of 
believers in character of a Christian, and then at the 
place of immersion confounding him by suddenly 
leaving him the alternative of admitting him into 
the church unimmersed, or taking the responsibility 
of denying him Christian fellowship unless rebaptized. 

His old-fashioned Methodist liatred for fashionable 
ornaments comes quaintly out in his story of a rich 
man, who could not find peace in believing until he 
had torn off his shirt-ruffles and thrown them down 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 383 

in the straw at the camp-meeting ; after which, " in 
less than two minutes God blessed his soul, and he 
sprang to his feet, loudly praising God !" 

A " book-learned " minister once tried to confound 
him bj addressing him in Greek. With ready wit 
he listened, as if intelligently, and replied at some 
length in the backwoods German, which he had 
learned in his youth, which the other took for 
Hebrew, and was confounded. And the old man 
proceeds to compare the educated preachers he had 
seen to a " gosling with the straddles." 

The camp-meetings were almost always infested by 
rowdies, who often organized under a captain and 
did all in their power to break up the exercises by 
noise, personal violence, liquor-selling and drinking, 
riotous conduct, stealing horses and wagons, and all 
maimer of annoyances. Once Cartwright blocked 
their game by appointing their captain himself to the 
business of preserving order. Again, the captain of 
the rowdies was struck down among the ''mourners" 
just as he had come quietly up to hang a string 
of frogs round the preacher's neck. Once he con- 
fronted their chief with a club, knocked him off his 
horse, and as his discouraged companions fled, se- 
cured him and had him fined fifty dollars. Once he 
captured the whisky which the rowdies were drink- 
ing, and when they came up at night to stone the 
the preacher's tent, he had ah-eady been among them 



384 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

in disguise and learned their plan, and singly drove 
them all oil* with a sudden sharp volley of pebbles. 

Again, he sent a liquor-seller to jail for selling on the 
camp-ground, had himself and four bold friends sum- 
moned by the timid officer as a posse, and never left 
the culprit until he had j)aid fine and costs; and 
when the enraged rowdies undertook to beat up the 
preacher's quarters at night, he drove off one of their 
leaders by hitting him a violent blow with a " chunk 
of fire," and another with a smart stroke on the head 
with a club, which drove out his " dispensation of 
mischief." At another time, he had himself and "^yq 
stout men summoned by a frightened peace-officer, 
secured a whisky-seller who had been rescued by his 
fellows, then took the deputy-sheriff, who would 
have ordered the prisoner released, and seizing thir- 
teen more of the mob, had them all fined, or made 
to give security on an appeal. One more whisky- 
dealer, who kept a loaded musket by him, the 
shrewd and fearless Cartwright secured by night in 
his own wagon, scared him handsomely, fired off his 
musket, threw away his powder, and drove him 
away, beaten and ashamed. 

Discussing doctrines with a boastful Baptist pres- 
byter, he silenced him with a question witty and inge- 
nious, whether its implication is true or not, viz. : 
" If there are no children in hell, and all 3"oung 
children who die go to heaven, is not that church 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 385 

which has no children in it more like hell than 
heaven ?" 

Coining to a new circuit, he found at his first 
appointment but one solitary hearer, and he a one- 
eyed man ; but preached his very best to him for 
three-qnarters of an honr. At his next coming, this 
hearer had so sounded his praises that he had a large 
attendance, and a great reyival followed. 

When a certain woman used to disturb his class- 
meetings, he hoisted her out of doors by main force, 
and then held the door shut by standing inside with 
his back to it, while he went on with the exercises. 
"When a fat and unbelieving old lady troubled him 
at camp-meeting by kicking her daughters as they 
knelt to pray among the " mourners," he caught her 
dexterously by the foot and tipped her over back- 
ward among the benches, where she bustled about a 
long time to get up, because of her size, while the 
victorious preacher went straight on with his exhort- 
ing. There was a dance at an inn where he stoj)ped, 
and no room to sit in but the ball-room. A young 
girl politely asked him to dance with her. He led 
her out on the floor, and as the fiddler was about to 
strike up, said to the company that it was his custom 
to ask God's blessing on all undertakings, and he 
would do this now. Instantly dropping on his knees, 
he pulled his partner down too, and prayed until 
the fiddler fled in fright, and some of the dancers 

17 



386 PIONEERS, TEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

■\vept or cried for mercy ; then proceeded to exhort 
and sing hymns, and did not cease his labors until he 
he had organized a Methodist church of thirty-two 
members, and made the landlord class-leader. 

A grey-haired old man, a Baptist, whose custom it 
was to do so, once interrupted the amusing stories he 
was dealing out to his congregation, by calling out 
sternly, " Make us cry, make us cry ; don't make us 
laugh !" "VYith equal sternness, and turning short 
and sharp upon him, Cartwright instantly answered, 
" I don't hold the puckering strings of your mouths, 
and I want you to mind the negro's eleventh com- 
mandment, and that is, ' Every man mind his own 
business.' " The abashed old man was silent. 

While Cartwright was candidate for the Legisla- 
ture of Illinois, he sought out a man who had spread 
a slanderous story that he had tried to escape paying 
a note, by perjury. Finding him in a public place in 
a crowd, he told him to acknowledge his falsehood 
there and then, or he would " sweep the streets with 
him to his heart's content." The coward acknow- 
ledged his lie ; and if he had not, the feai'less preacher 
would surely have chastised him as he promised. 
"While he was in the House, afterward, an enraged 
opponent threatened to knock him down if he finished 
a certain course of remark. Cartwright finished it, 
and when the House adjourned, marched straight up 
to him and asked him if he was for peace or war ? 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 387 

" Oh, for peace," was the answer ; " come home and 
take tea with me." So they went, arm in arm ; and 
when the company, including the governor and his 
wife, were about to eat without asking a blessing, 
Cartwright said plainly, " Governor, ask a blessing." 
The official blushed, apologized, and requested the 
preacher to do it, which he did. 

He once had a discussion with an infidel, who 
ruled the Bible out of evidence ; to which Cartwright 
submitted, and in his turn would have ruled Tom 
Paine out. And when his adversary flew into a rage 
at this, and cursed and blasphemed, the preacher in 
his turn filled with righteous wrath, seized him by 
the head and jaw, and rattled his teeth together like 
so many pebbles. The angry man would have struck 
him, but was prevented, and afterward became his 
friend. 

But the time would fail me to relate the innumer- 
able singular experiences of this wonderful old man. 
Such as he are the real pioneers of Methodism in the 
Mississippi Valley; strong, fearless, active, ready, 
quick-witted, jovial, even humorous and jocular, 
rough, as able as the best in a free fight, yet kindly, 
pure, sensible, fatherly, benevolent, unwearied in 
self-sacrifice and well-doing; wise in counsel, tho- 
roughly practical, yet the personification of idealists 
in their prompt appreciation of whatever was proper 
for their use, whether fashionable or not ; often set in 



388 PIONEERS, 

some narrow prejudice and bitterly sectarian, yet 
broad and liberal in views of church government, 
and showing and wielding with effect all the quali- 
ties which constitute rulers of men. And above all, 
filled and overflowing with the love of Christ and the 
ardent desire to save sonls. Such were Peter Cart- 
wright and his noble brethren of the early church of 
the wilderness. 

I might occupy pages in commemorating the noble 
and admirable qualities of others of the great Metho- 
dist leaders ; of Henry B. Bascom, the yonng Apollo 
of the West, the lofty orator, and noble useful Christ- 
ian and minister ; of the veteran preacher James B. 
Finley ; of many others of the great army of devoted 
men, some now gone to their last account, some yet 
living and laboring among ns — still at work within 
my own beloved church. But I mnst close. Whole 
volumes have already been written npon the lives of 
Cartwright, Bascom, Finley, and others. It would 
be presumptuous and useless to attempt more in this 
place than this passing allusion. 



Lecture IX. 

ITS MANIFESTATIONS, 
ELOQUENCE AND HUMOR. 



WESTERN MIND: 

ITS MANIFESTATIONS, ELOQUENCE AND HUMOE. 

The query was propounded in the "EdinbiirgliEe- 
view '' more than a quarter of a century ago, " Who 
reads an American book ?" The question has been 
often asked, both on this and on the other side of 
the Atlantic, why have we not an American litera- 
ture ? I should now hardly be willing to concede 
that we have not. It would be a strangely ignorant 
or prejudiced Englishman who would pretend that 
we had not. And yet it would not be strange if we 
had not. The demands upon American mind have 
been of too pressing and urgent a character to allow 
it to devote much time or attention to the specific 
pursuit of letters. Here was a continent to subdue ; 
a wilderness to be reclaimed ; mountains to be 
scaled ; lakes, oceans and gulfs to be joined together ; 
and meantime the supplies for daily necessity and 
daily consumption to be raised, and conveyed to mar- 
ket. Men must have bread before books. Men 
must build barns before they establish colleges. Men 
must learn the language of the rifle, the axe and the 

391 



plough, before they learn the lessons of Grecian and 
Eoman philosophy and history ; and to those pur- 
suits was the early American intellect obliged to 
devote itself, by a sort of simple and hearty and con- 
stant consecration. There was no possibility of 
escape ; no freedom or exemption from this obliga- 
tion. The early settlers had to solve the imperative 
instant questions of present want; problems that 
were urging themselves upon their attention with 
every day, and with every recurring season. When 
the forest is felled, and the soil is turned, and the 
■ granaries are established, and the mouths of wives 
and little ones filled, and their bodies clad, then may 
American intellect betake itself to the study and mak- 
ing of books. 

These remarks aj^ply to the sea-board here, as much 
as to the interior. We are comparatively a young peo- 
ple. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures — the earli- 
est practical problems of society — though now in some- 
what more developed forms, must still be studied. 
And if this is true of the country east of the moun- 
tains, how much more emphatically and peculiarly 
is it true of that west of the mountains ! Tlie for- 
mer is an old country in comparison with the latter. 
The earliest settlers of our race established them- 
selves there only in 17T0 — only ninety years ago — a 
brief space in a nation's life. And how vast and vari- 
ous were the tasks which at once presented them- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 393 

selves to the few settlers, demanding instant and 
constant fulfillment, and threatening death if ne- 
glected. A boundless territory, to which the land 
lying east of the mountains is scarce more than a drop 
in the bucket, was to be wrested by sturdy and long- 
continued labor from the dominion of nature, freed 
from savage beasts, and made the cultivated fruitful 
home of civilized society. Tillable and arable fields, 
homes, gardens, towns, were all to be acquired by a 
series of laborious victories over the unresisting, yet 
opposing forces of nature. 

Again : the men who did this must also maintain 
and cultivate and protect the structure of social life, 
by framing something — whether rude or elaborate 
matters not so much — but something in the nature of 
a body of laws, and a system of ^government. The 
crude and scanty means of educating the young and 
preaching the Gospel were also to be afibrded ; but I 
need only mention them. 

And still further : all this had to be done in the 
presence of a class of perils dreadful beyond anything 
conceivable by the citizens who now dwelt so securely 
under the shadow of strong municipal and State or- 
ganizations, and whose very recital makes the flesh 
creep, and the blood run cold. I mean the Indian 
and British hostilities, which were so long such a ter- 
rible and incessant drain upon the vigor and the 
very life-blood of the infant western common- 
ly* 



394 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

wealths. Such requirements drew heavily tipon all 
the functions of body, mind and heart ; chiefly how- 
ever upon the first. For the first task of a new na- 
tion, as I have shown, is for the muscles and sinews. 
Only when this is fulfilled conies the demand upon the 
brain and upon the soul. 

But the western people have been steadily rising 
in the path thus indicated, for many years. In com- 
mon with tlie older communities east of the moun- 
tains, they have been rising and advancing in the 
pilgrimage of humanity, up from the region of mus- 
cular development and animal activity, to that of 
intellectual and moral culture. Such progress can 
never be raj^id. Life's great tasks are not achieved 
in a hurry. Personal culture is the work of time ; 
and it is only in. him who descends from a line of 
cultivated ancestors, that the highest exhibition of 
human attainments, ordinarily speaking, is possible. 
Much more is this true of a race — of a nation. 

Around the early settler lay the broad shadows 
of the primeval forests. Beneath him was the rich 
turf that had never been disturbed by a coulter ; and 
around him the solemn primeval groves that had 
never reverberated to the sound of the axe — where 
only the deafening yell of the savage war-whoop had 
disturbed the silence, and where only the dreadful 
carnage of savage warfare had discolored the soil. He 
possessed broad streams, matchless in beauty, and a 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 395 

soil rich beyond measure ; vacant ; only awaiting 
occupancy; and returning the largest product and 
profit to the tiller's energy and industry. In this 
lovely country, cabin homes were to be erected, and 
the forms of social and civil organization to be esta- 
blished. 

Tliese things were rapidly done. And is this a little 
thing ? Do you call this an insignificant product of 
a nation's brains ; a trifling net result of a nation's 
activity? The erection of such a government as 
that whose blessings we now enjoy, where every 
man, the humblest, the poorest — where every 
child, though an outcast and alien, sits secure be- 
neath the broad and certain sggis of our national 
liberties, our national freedom, our national juris- 
prudence and police — do you call this, indeed, a 
small result? We have whittled out, amongst us, 
constitutions for one-and-thirty confederated States. 
The vast genius and learning, the still vaster skill 
and talent, all the combined energies of France, 
month after month, and year after year, endeavored 
to construct a constitution ; and how has it failed ! 
It failed first, a little after our own Constitution 
went into successful operation ; and it has been fail- 
ing almost ever since. But what we have to show 
is a noble result of the labor of a nation's brains. If 
we had never written a book, if we had never penned 
a line save those which are found in our Congres- 



396 



Bional debates, and statute-books and Constitutions, 1 
take it that we liave nevertheless built one of the 
grandest intellectual pyramids the sun ever yet 
shone upon. This is not a tribute to national vanity ; 
it is a just statement of a nation's claims. 

And now these settlers, hardy, intrepid, unkempt, 
unwashed backwoodsmen, betake themselves to their 
business as law-makers. And in this, as in every other 
business they proceed with a certain eager earnestness, 
a kind of rapt enthusiasm. If they are to be law- 
makers, they will be law-makers in deed and in truth ; 
and there shall be no shilly-shally, no child's play, no 
trifling about it. The laws may be simple, and even 
seasoned with a spice of grim comicality ; but they 
are stringent, direct, and effective. There was one, 
for example, at an early day in the West, that no 
man should be allowed to remain in that region who 
had not some visible and honorable means of supj)ort. 
Every man must have work to do, and must be doing 
it, sufficient to procure him the money, or the 
money's worth, which is necessary in order to live. 
There came into one of the new States where this law 
was in force, a young man who seemed to have no 
employment. His hands were in his pockets, and 
his mouth puckered to a whistle, and that seemed his 
business in this life. Some of the old gentlemen of 
the vicinity informed him that they had a statute of 
this description on their books, and that he must find 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 397 

some occupation, or he had better go to some other 
and idler country. But he fancied, as some of our 
young folks to-day are apt to do, that they were a 
set of incapable old fogies, who set an absurd over- 
value upon their laws and constitution, and that 
they were not to be heeded. In his coat pocket was 
the secret of his living — a pack of greasy cards, into 
the mystery of the manipulation of which he pro- 
posed to initiate all the young men of the place ; 
winning their money, corrupting their morals, and 
debauching their dispositions ; and then to "gang his 
gate " as a missionary of the devil, onward to other 
regions, to repeat the same operation. At the expir- 
ation, however, of the notice served by the old fogy 
gentlemen, a writ was, to his astonishment, served 
upon him by an officer, and he was carried to the 
"jug," as they metaphorically called the jail, putting 
the end for the means, I fancy, because they saw 
clearly enough that the jug generally brings people 
there. Having deposited him here for safe keeping, 
due advertisement was made, and the young man, in 
pursuance of the quaint penalty attached to this law, 
was marched out into the middle of the public square, 
and set up on the horse block, where the sheriff, as 
auctioneer, knocked him down to the highest bidder. 
This fortunate person was the village blacksmith, who 
forthwith put a chain round his leg and took him to 
his smithy, where for three months, from six o'clock 



398 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

in the morning till six in the evening our young 
friend was inducted, with some exertion on the black- 
smith's part, and much more on his own, into the 
whole art and mystery of blowing and striking ; and 
was deposited for safe keeping every night in the 
jail. At the expiration of his time, the young man, 
liberated from his confinement, shook off the dust of 
that town from his shoes, and as he turned his back 
to the place, swore it was the meanest coimtry that 
a white man ever got into. 

Their laws, I say, may have been strict, and the 
execution of them may have been stringent and swift 
enough ; for oftentimes the only sheriff was the ready 
rifle, resting upon the pummel of the saddle, and the 
only judge, the awful Judge Lynch, who held his 
dread tribunal under the shadow of the first tree, 
and whose decrees were executed without appeal, 
bill of exceptions, new trial, recommitment, respite 
or pardon, by stalwart men, who swung the culprit 
up by a rope led over the branch of a tree, instantly 
after j udgment given. 

The law of these new countries, whether codified 
and written by select wise men, or dictated by the 
clear but rough conclusions of the untutored shrewd 
conscience and commonsense of the community, 
must be enforced, and judgments under it executed. 
For laws not enforced are hotbeds of crime. The 
case here was urgent, the pressure instant ; and the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 899^ 

conduct of STicli courts of " Eegulators " as very com- 
monly administered this prompt rude justice, though 
it seems, compared to our civilized and refined no- 
tions, harsh and barbarous in the extreme, was, in 
truth, the only possible means of securing any legal 
sanctions, any punishment for guilt or protection for 
innocence. For these new settlements woi^e an Al- 
satia to which there gathered all the vagabonds, 
rufiians, swindlers, thieves, criminals of every name, 
whose evil deeds had made the older settlements too 
hot to hold them, and who trusted to renew a safer 
course of guilt among the wild forests and thinly 
scattered settlements. Society must and will protect 
itself; and until better means are provided, it will 
use those which are at hand. It has always been so 
since Cain, the murderer, felt that every man that 
found him would slay him, and since the hand of 
every man was against the first outlaw, Ishmael. It 
has always been so, dovrn to the day when we have 
seen great cities rid, only by such rude and lament- 
able means, of bands of villians impregnable to their 
laws. It will be well for our own great Republic to 
remember this ; for precisely as our voters cease 
to consider thoughtfully, decide carefully, vote 
wisely, and act decisively — precisely as they shall 
fail in their great political duty of making good laws, 
choosing good men to enforce them, and then watch- 
ing sharply over the good laws and the good raen 



4:00 PIONEERS, PEEACIIEES AND PEOPLE 

too — jnst in that same measure, for every neglect do 
we take a step backward toward the law of the 
strong hand, social dismemberment, and barbarism. 

Besides the law-making or law-enforcing assem- 
olies of these rude foresters, whether more or less 
formal, the militia musters afforded another favorite 
opportunity for these social and genial people to 
gather themselves together. There was fighting, 
and desperate fighting too, in their midst or on their 
borders, for half a century and more after their first 
settlements. This long experience resulted in a 
decided tendency to military organizations and 
amusements ; and these drills and gatherings W' ere 
punctually attended, and all the exercises of the oc- 
casion strictly and earnestly obeyed, both on account 
of their vast practical importance, and as a gratifica- 
tion of their military instincts. Such "public 
bandings," as they were called by a local synonym 
of the "trainings" and "musters" of other States 
and all similar gatherings, were eagerly made use of 
by politicians ; a class of men wdio very early be- 
came numerous and active in the West. 

Perhaps this circumstance may be said to have 
produced the first manifestations of western mind, and 
one of its most prominent and characteristic ones, — 
viz. : oral political addresses — stump speeches, so 
called. This name was derived from the platform 
most commonly used by the orators of the back 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 401 

woods, whose actual or intended constituents, as tlie 
case might be, coald not be troubled with the elabo- 
rate niceties of desks or boarded rostrums, and who, 
by a most natural ascent, usually occupied a stump, 
the convenient Pnyx of every country square or 
court-house green. These ambitious aspirants, com- 
monly not much if at all more learned than their 
ragged auditory, and superior to them only in 
shrewdness, or desire of office, or impudence, or all, 
neither needed nor could use any subtle trains of 
reasoning or lofty sublimities of thought. Any 
excesdvQ tumefactions of sjDeech often collapsed 
ignominiously at the prick of some stinging joke, 
probably bearing no particular relation to the speak- 
er's speech, and applicable only because successful. 
Thus, a well-known anecdote of one of these windy 
gentlemen relates that he was quite overthrown 
at the summit of a gorgeous flight of eloquence, 
and left to slink dumbfounded from the stage, be- 
cause an unscrupulous adversary of tropes and 
figures bawled out at his back, " Guess he wouldn't 
talk quite so hifalutenatin' if he knowed how his 
breeches was torn out behind!" The horrified 
orator, deceived for an instant, clapped a hand to 
the part indicated, and was destroyed — overwhelmed 
in inextinguishable laughter. 

But a trifling misadventure did not always upset 
the speaker. Tlius, one of them who had let fly that 



402 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

favorite fowl of orators, the American eagle, was 
tracing his magnificent flight into the uppermost 
em23yrean. He followed the wondrous bird with 
ecstatic eje and finger raised ; and as he cried out, 
" Don't jon see him, fellow-citizens, a risin' higher 
and higher?" — an unsophisticated "fellow-citizen," 
in his immense simplicity, confiding that there was a 
real eagle, and gazing intently in vain to behold 
him, sung out, " Well, d — d if I can see him ! " 
" IIoss ! " exclaimed the s]3eaker, transfixing the 
matter-of-fact man with his gaze and his gesture, 
and sx^eaking in the same oratorical magnificence of 
tone — " Hoss ! I was a speakin' in a figger ! " And 
ofi" he wxnt again wdtli his eagle ; his promptness 
and seriousness in the two transitions effectually 
shutting out any ridicule. 

This audience was of men whose physique had been 
cultivated at the expense of much of their intellect ; 
whose sense was not proper but common ; whose 
knowledge had not come from books, but from the 
hard necessities and incessant exertions of a la- 
borious and perilous life. The speaker, then, must 
use their vernacular — a vernacular which we should 
think vulgar — and his metaphors and similes, if he 
used them at all, must be such as would readily pene- 
trate beneath their tangled hair, and find lodgment 
in their intellects. And he must, at the same time, 
appeal to their feelings ; for the feelings exercise a 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 403 

much quicker and surer power over the intellect, 
than the intellect over the feelings. He could not, 
accordingly, stand still and merely emit his words as 
a fountain passively pours out water, for he who 
would move his audience must be moved himself. 
It would never do for him to stand and read off a 
written paper, first looking at the audience and then 
back to his manuscript. It is the eye which wields 
the speaker's power over an assembly. If you 
would affect any man, your eyes must meet his. If 
you would transfuse into him your thought, your 
feeling, your passion, your imagination, your poetry, 
— if, in a word, you would transfuse your life into 
him, your eye must meet his ; in the forcible old 
Scripture phrase, you must " see eye to eye." And, 
as it is with one man, so it is with many. For the 
manner of the word is powerful, much more than 
the word itself. It is not the brains which produce 
results, it is the individual, the being, the self, the I, 
behind them ; the manner of the speaking clothes 
the spoken words with whatever of power or beauty 
is exerted or shown by the speaker. It is the power 
of the orator accordingly, his earnestness, his pro- 
found conviction, his intense realization of his truth, 
his yearning desire to transfer his conciousness of it 
to the hearers, which, as it were, throws it red-hot 
into their minds and hearts. They receive it ; and 
the sensation or emotion which spreads among them 



404: PIONEEES, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

as lie speaks, flashes back to liim from their kindling 
eyes ; and Lis strength, which he has sent out to 
them, comes back to him, grown gigantic with the 
strength of thousands ; and now he speaks in the 
power of a thousand souls instead of one ; and the 
flux and reflux of mutual influence, as managed for his 
purposes by the intellect of the speaker, thus become 
the means and the measure of his power over 
himself and them. Thus it is, that the rude fellow 
upon the barbarous backwoods hustings, who over- 
flows with language ungrammatical and unrhetorical, 
whose address fairly bristles with odd phrases and 
border lingo, becomes a prophet clothed in garments 
of supernatural power, and leads his audience, wil- 
ling captives, whithersoever he lists, till, like the 
ancient Franks when they made a king, they bear 
him on their shoulders to his triumph. 

Such a people, not trained to logic nor disciplined 
in reasoning ; who proceed by common sense, practi- 
cal prudence, ordinary business forecast, and acquaint- 
ance with the men and things and principles of every- 
day life, yet of excitable passions and feelings, and 
who are only to be efiectully appealed to by a speaker 
of the kind I have attempted to describe, and who is, 
in their phrase, " dead in earnest," are passing 
through a mental discipline preliminary to the higher 
walks of literature, and to the development of the 
nobler moral faculties. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 405 

And this first manifestation of western mind — in 
their peculiar spoken eloquence, is always the same ; 
whether before a jmy, on the stump, at the camp- 
meeting, at a militia muster, a barbacue, a corn- 
husking, a house-raising, a log-rolling, a wedding or 
a quilting — for the constituency is always the same — 
is unvarying and universal. The man who would 
move them, would fuse their minds into one homo- 
geneous subjection to his will, no matter what his 
other subordinate or collateral attainments, must al- 
ways have these elementary primal powers; the 
power to say whatever he has to say clearly and 
forcibly , and the power of saying it with the strength 
of conviction, earnestness *and intense enthusiasm. 

The men of the East, trained to a colder style of 
speech, who demand a reason for every thought sub- 
mitted to them ; who have had the discipline of two 
studious and orderly centuries this side the Atlantic ; 
who are under the organic influence of so many 
generations dwelling among churches and school- 
houses and printing-presses — a discipline which is 
a great privilege, a benign heritage, yea, even a 
benediction from above upon them — can scarcely 
conceive and could not at all comprehend the in- 
fluence which one of these western orators exerts 
upon his audience, or its gladdening and rejoicing 
efl'ect upon his own nature ; nor how the people gather 
and throng around him and revel in his speech as an 



406 nONEERS, PEEACHEE8 AND PEOPLE 

unbouglit, iinpurcliaseable pleasure, one of the rarest 
of life. 

This rough people, born and bred in the wilderness, 
has, after the universal human fashion, expressed a 
characteristic and interesting representation of its 
traits and tendencies in its language. For there is, 
so to speak, a western Anglo- American language, 
corresj^onding singularly and strictly with the west- 
ern style of thought, and the character of western 
men. This language is thickly studded with rude 
proverbial forms, all redundant with wild untrained 
metaphors, some of which, if you please, we will call 
cant and slang. But all these phrases have a mean- 
ing, often quaintly and curicfasly expressed ; and they 
have usually sprung spontaneously out of the associa- 
tions or necessities of the speakers' lives. Or, again, 
they are as freely and naturally the outgrowth of the 
minds that produce them, as is the luxuriant cane of 
the strong deep rich soil of the brakes; not drawn or 
pressed forth by forces from outside, but the free 
fantastic blossoms of untaught spontaneous thoughts. 

To this western language, as well as to the thought 
that threw it out, fun and humor gave a color almost 
predominant. Even in the hardest and sternest 
periods of their history, when the crack of the rifle 
and whiz of the tomahawk were constantly in their 
ears, they relished fun to the last and most exquisite 
degree. A vein of humor runs through all the nature 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI, 407 

of this people. They may seem stern, even savage ; 
sombre, and even sorrowful ; self-possessed and quiet ; 
and all these they are, at times, perhaps often. But 
not constantly ; they are moved by the influence of 
the occasion, and carried out from these serious 
frames of mind. Eut they are jovial and fun-loving, 
always ; and whatever their circumstances, they will 
have, from time to time, a season of such utter heart- 
felt relaxation as sometimes to border on license; 
where the most uproarious jollity and glee is the 
order of the day. There is a curious entry in the 
diary of George Rogers Clark, made during a visit 
to Kentucky at a time when the whites were suffering 
greatly from the attacks of the savages, showing how 
this characteristic struck the hardy soldier; ''25th 
July, 1776. Lieut. Lynn was married this day at 
Harrod's Station" — remember that in all that year 
there was not a day when the neighborhood of Har- 
rod's Station was free from the presence of hostile 
savages — " and the merry-making was absolutely 
marvellous." Old Bishop Asbury, who made a jour- 
ney into the same region in 1783 or 1784, while the 
Indian fighting was still going on, and the people 
were pressed to the uttermost, says, " It is marvellous 
to see hosv the desire for matrimony reigneth in this 
country." The entrances upon these matrimonial 
speculations, so heartily ventured upon by the young 
people — by the girls generally at fifteen and the boys 



408 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

at seventeen — were invariably made tlie occasions for 
the j oiliest and most thorongligoing fun. 

The negroes were ex officio, as ever, lovers of jokes 
and fun, and even in time of war were as cool and 
as inclined to jollity as their reckless masters. One 
of them, who was out along with his master and a 
band of foresters in hot pursuit of a party of Indians, 
who had committed an outrage uj)on some lonely 
cabin or blockhouse, made an observation which still 
remains on record; a simple speech enough, but 
which may serve to illustrate my point. The pursu- 
ers gained sight of the Indians while descending a 
hill. As the foremost of the whites was hastening 
forward, closely followed by the warlike Sambo, the 
captain of the whites, observing that the Indians 
greatly outnumbered his force, gave the low whistle 
which was the signal of retreat. Sambo, however, 
heedless of the unwelcome order of recall, pressed on 
clown the hill with his white companion, and taking 
shelter in a thicket, observed an immense Indian peer- 
ing above the hill beyond, to reconnoitre the position 
of the pursuers, his head just visible from behind the 
trunk of a tree. Sambo raises his rifle and blazes 
away at him, singing out at the top of his voice, 
" Dar 1 Take dat to remember Sambo the black white 
man !" and then retraces his steps. 

Even the Indians, usually reckoned so sombre and 
saturnine a race, were by no means destitute of a 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 409 

veiy peculiar dry and quaint liumor. Indeed, it is 
beyond doubt tliat in the social security of their far 
and peaceful homes in the wilderness, they laughed 
and chatted and joked, and sung and told stories 
with as much glee, and careless, hap]3y delight, as 
any civilized circles. But though the indications of 
their possession of wit and humor are equally well 
authenticated, they are much rarer. A good speci- 
men of Indian humor, without any such intention on 
the part of the savage, was a remark made by one of 
them while the fearful earthquakes of 1811-12 were 
-devastating the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio, 
and the wildest and most terrific freaks of nature 
were being exhibited in many portions of that vast 
area. While New Madrid seemed sinking bodily 
into the abyss, and the bed of the vast Mississippi 
River was undergoing an absolute change of location, 
its great floods rushing through the monstrous chasms 
which opened a new and strange path for the waters, 
while the great trees were rocking to and fro, trem- 
bling and falling, and the earth gaped in bottomless 
rents, the savage stood cool and stoical, his arms 
folded upon his breast, gazing upon the scene. A 
white man addressed him with the inquiry ," "What 
do you make of all this? "What do these things 
mean ?" The Indian, sorrowfully enough, and as if 
the last prop of all his hopes here and hereafter were 
gone, thus delivered a most original — and aboriginal 

18 



410 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

— tlieoiy of earthquakes : " Great Spirit got whisky 
too miicli !" 

The wild life of the borderers naturally occasioned 
die coining of many singular words and phrases. 
These, like many of the idioms and modes of speech 
peculiar to the Indians, were the result not of imagi- 
nation, but of a paucity of language. It is common 
to descant upon the poetry and eloquence of the In- 
dians ; and the celebrated speech of Logan is often 
mentioned — as Jefferson mentioned it — as almost un- 
paralleled in the records of ancient or modern ora- 
tory. Yet, in the first place, it may well be ques- 
tioned whether those words ever passed Logan's lips. 
And if they did, although it is very true that they 
are preeminent among specimens of Indian oratory, 
it is still true of that oratory in general, that its poet- 
ical phrases and ever recurring formulas and figures 
and personifications are singularly few in number, 
and monotonously repeated, and this for the reason 
that these wild and unreflecting and thoughtless peo- 
ple, ignorant of abstract thinking, destitute of 
abstract ideas, and circumscribed within a very nar- 
row circle of mental action, are unable to convey any 
except a very small number of very ordinary and 
every-day ideas, without employing terms borrowed 
from material nature. Their language possessed no 
words — or almost none — for the expression of abstract 
ideas ; nor did it contain words of high intellectual 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 411 

significance, or deep ethical meaning. Even for 
concej)tions as ordinary among ns as "prosperous 
circumstances," " affluence," or " a season of remark- 
able enjoyment," they had no better form of expres- 
sion than " a sunshiny day ;" or "a day as placid as the 
bosom of a lake." Such terms as these, or, for in- 
stance, those well-known figurative expressions of 
"burying the hatchet," "brightening the chain of 
friendship," and the like, although to those unac- 
quainted with them seeming poetic enough, are in 
truth the meagre products of the barest and barren- 
est poverty. 

It was this dry and meagre form of language which 
drove both Indians and Anglo-American borderers 
to the use of analogous terms, whose inappropriate- 
ness often renders them quaint or even witty, where 
no such effect was intended. There is in print a well- 
knoY/n writ, issued by an Indian justice of the peace, 
long ago in Massachusetts, which illustrates my point. 
It ran thus : — " I, Hihoudi, You, Peter Waterman. 
Jeremy Wicket. Quick you take him, fast you hold 
him, straight you bring him before me. Hihoudi." 
A singularly close parallel to this was the proclama- 
tion of the western sheriff, at the beginning and 
ending of court. As the ermined judge ascended 
the tribunal, this matter-of-fact functionary bawled 
out, " O yes, O yes, court am open!" and when the 
labors of the day were over, he proclaimed again 



412 PIONEERS, PEEACHER8 AND PEOPLE 

with genuine western adherence to sense and logic, 
and disregard of form, the substance of the fact, thus : 
" O yes, O yes, court am shet !" 

Thus, I repeat, many of the expressions of the wes- 
tern borderers which seem to us imaginative, humor- 
ous, or ludicrous, though in some cases, perhaps, de- 
rived from ancestors or ancestral peculiarities, were 
usually adopted as the first which came to hand 
when the new idea to be expressed came up asking 
for a word. The foresters had no training in lan- 
guage, and no habitude in abstract thought, or in 
modifying and distinguishing notions. But they had 
abundant readiness and self-reliance, and when they 
wanted a new word they either took an old one and 
modified it into a new one, much on the principle 
which forced their wives to make one utensil serve 
as wash-basin, kettle, dish, dish-pan, and swill-pail ; 
or they manufactured one out of whole cloth, often 
in ridiculous exemplification of that figure of speech 
to which the grammarians have given the clumsy 
name of onomatopoeia : namely, making the sound 
suggest the sense. 

The former of these two methods made words like 
" spontanaceous " for spontaneous ; " obfusticate " for 
obfuscate ; " cantankerous " for cankerous ; " rampa- 
gious " or " rampunctious " for rampant ; " hifalutin " 
or " hifalutin atin " for high-flying; " tetotaciously " 
for totally; and the like. The latter resulted in 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 413 

terms Laving often a ludicrous general similarity to 
proper English words of the long Latin kind, but 
utterly unfounded in fact ; the merest phantoms of a 
raw, absurd and unconscious fancy. Such are "sock- 
dolager" for a knock-down blow; " Explatterate," 
to crush or smash ; " explunctify," for the same ; 
" honey-fuggle," to hang about one and flatter him for 
mean purposes ; and so on. 

Many of the figures of speech and forms of rheto- 
ric which characterize western eloquence, partake of 
the same bombastic and unsound character ; this, 
however, of course not being true of the best of the 
western orators. And all these, words and figures 
and sentences, while they possess a show of poetical 
or imaginative character, with more or less of its 
actual essence, are nevertheless as a whole the pro- 
ducts of deplorable and extreme barrenness of mind 
and poverty of thought. 

But with the gradual growth of population, wealth, 
refinement and education, there is of course a gra- 
dual change in these respects ; the phraseology and 
the intellect of the people improve and develop to- 
gether. This change is brought about at the West, 
in great measure, by means of the increasing fre- 
quency of public speaking. And we must not judge 
of the power exerted upon the people, nor the good 
done them, merely by estimating the amount of posi- 
tive information furnished by the speaker, and his 



414 PIONEEES, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

grade of intelligence. It is from the stimulation 
wliicli tlieir natures experience, from his pouring out 
and rendering up to them of the treasures of his own 
life and soul, that the abiding profit of his work is 
derived. Now the rude speeches and sermons of the 
West task and stimulate the intellects of the people, 
and set their minds in motion. The steam is turned 
on ; and when that is done, the engine must move 
forward or backward, or else explode. It may be 
admitted — to carry out the figure — that an explosion 
has sometimes happened, but on the whole, the gene- 
ral result has been a movement ahead. As was na- 
turally to be expected, there was undue emphasis, 
exaggeration, violence, and exceeding heat. All this 
Was perfectly natural, and to be expected ; but from 
this noisy fermentation has come out, after all, a style 
of eloquence which has become distinctively and em- 
phatically American eloquence. The spoken elo- 
quence of New England is for the most part from 
manuscript. Her first settlers brought old world 
forms and fashions from the old world with them. 
Their preachers were set at an appalling distance 
from their congregations. Between the pulj)it, 
perched far up toward the ceiling, and the seats, was 
an awful abysmal depth. Above the lofty desk was 
dimly seen the white cravat, and above that the head 
of the preacher. His eye was averted and fastened 
downward upon his manuscript, and his discoui'se, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 415 

or exercitation, or whatever it might be, was de- 
livered in a monotonous, regular cadence, probably 
relieved from time to time by some quaint blunder, 
the result of indistinct penmanship, or dim religious 
light. It was not this preacher's business to arouse 
his audience. The theory of the worship of the 
period was opposed to that. His^ people did not wish 
excitement or stimulus, or astonishment, or agitation. 
They simply desired information ; they wished to be 
instructed ; to have their judgment informed, or their 
reason enlightened. Thus the preacher might safely 
remain perched up in his far distant unimpassioned 
eyrie. 

But how would such a style of eloquence — if, in- 
deed truth will permit the name of eloquence to be 
applied to the reading of matter from a preconcerted 
manuscript — how would such a style of delivery be 
received out in the wild West ? Place your textual 
speaker out in the backwoods, on the stump, where a 
surging tide of humanity streams strongly around 
him, where the people press up toward him on every 
side, their keen eyes intently perusing his to see if 
he be in real earnest — " dead in earnest" — and where, 
as with a thousand darts, their contemptuous scorn 
would pierce him through if he were found playing 
a false game, trying to pump up tears by mere act- 
ing, or arousing an excitement without feeling it. 
Would such a style of oratory succeed there ? By no 



416 PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

means. The place is different, tlie hearers are differ- 
ent ; the time, the thing required, all the circum- 
stances are totally different. Here, in the vast nn- 
walled church of nature, with the leafy tree-tops for a 
ceiling, their massy stems for columns ; with the end- 
less mysterious cadences of the forest for a choir ; with 
the distant or nearer music and murmur of streams, 
and the ever-returning voice of birds sounding in 
their ears for the made-up music of a picked band of 
exclusive singers: here stand men whose ears are 
trained to catch the faintest foot-fall of the distant 
deer, or the rustle of their antlers against branch or 
bough of the forest track — whose eyes are skilled 
to discern the trail of savages, who leave scarce a 
track behind them ; and who will follow upon that 
trail, utterly invisible to the untrained eye, as surely 
as a bloodhound follows the scent, ten or twenty, or 
a hundred miles — whose eye and hand are so well 
practised that they can drive a nail or snuff a candle 
with the long, heavy western rifle. Such men, edu- 
cated for years, or even generations, in that hard 
scliool of necessity, where ev6ry one's hand and wood- 
man's skill must keep his head ; where incessant 
pressing necessities required ever a prompt and suffi- 
cient answer in deeds ; and where words needed to be 
but few, and those the plainest and directest, required 
no delay nor preparation, nor oratorical coquetting, 
nor elaborate preliminary scribble ; no hesitation nor 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 417 

doubts in deeds ; no circumlocution in words. To 
restrain, influence, direct, govern, such a surging 
sea of life as tliis, required something very different 
from a written address. The effect of the ISTew 
England manner of preaching upon a western man 
is illustrated by the broad and random criticism of 
that same rough old Peter Cartwright, of whom I 
have already written. All that he thought it worth 
while to say of the young clergyman who delivered 
a written sermon somewhere along his western track, 
was, that " it made him think of a gosling that had 
got the straddles by wading in the dew." What that 
eloquence is which can and does control such a con- 
stituency, can scarce be conceived, except by those 
who have heard it. Yet there is is, and of a lofty 
grade of power and beauty ; and it has become dis- 
tinctively American in method and style. 

It would not be difficult to fill volumes with quo- 
tations illustrative of the eloquence and wit and 
humor of the West. But such quotations are too 
plentiful in our contemporary literature to make any 
such selection at all necessary ; and I have preferred 
accordingly to present such an imperfect analysis as 
I might of the shaping causes which have waited on 
its birth and growth. The causes of the character of 
western mind, the nature and derivation of its con- 
stituents, have been too little examined to be under 
stood or appreciated. 

18* 



418 PIONEERS, PKEACHEES AND PEOPLE 



As I already quoted a negro as affording an 
instance of the grim and cool humor characteristic 
of his western home, if not of his own tropical 
blood, so I desire to cite another as having, in 
a brief and homely description, exemplified a very 
high order of rude natural eloquence. This was 
a preacher, who was endeavoring to set forth the 
attributes of the Almighty ; and who summed up the 
mysterious and awful powers of the Unknown God 
i-n a single sentence, which, for terseness and telling 
force and beauty, it would be difficult to match. 
Using a common western and southern idiom, he 
thus said : " He totes the thunder in his fist, and 
flings the lightning from his fingers." 

I well remember the impression produced upon 
me — a boy of twenty-two years of age, educated 
in the woods and prairies of the West — when I attended 
for the first time the session of Congress at "Wash- 
ington. I imagined that whatever eloquence I might 
have heard was, at least in some sense, deficient in 
the higher and sublimer qualities of oratory. I had 
heard and read much of the great men of our 
national legislature, and fully expected to be 
charmed beyond measure, in House and Senate, 
with new revelations of majesty and beauty ; to be 
educated into a j)erfect passion for eloquence ; to sit 
long happy days and nights in the halls of Congress, 
listening, a humble scholar, to those great men as 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 419 

they expounded or enforced the principles of tlie 
laws and the statesmanship of the land. The disap- 
pointment I experienced was inconceivable. I had 
expected a new kind of speech, something loftier 
and nobler than I had heard before ; bnt, after hear- 
ino; the most famous debaters, the world-renowned 
champions of that great arena, I went home to my 
boarding-house every evening with the mental ex- 
clamation, " Can it be possible that all these men 
have taken lessons in eloquence from the old Metho- 
dist preachers and exhorters of the West ? " The 
most effective and successful of them were those who 
spoke loudest and with most passion, and thumped 
the desks the hardest, just as it was at the West. I 
have seen Adams and Webster thumping on the 
desks in front of them as if they had no knuckles 
at all, or wanted to knock them off. The western 
style of oratory has become American ; it is extem- 
pore, the thoughts suggested by the occasion, and 
the words such as mustered upon the hasty call of 
the thoughts; often harsh, or rude, or ill-sounding 
words ; but, nevertheless, words of force, every one 
effective in performing the service of the occasion. 

A western writer, in a sketch of a trip into the 
State of Kentucky about 1806, has occasion to 
describe one who was an early and splendid master 
of the style of eloquence of which I have spoken. 
This writer had occasion to visit the lower or Green 



420 PIONEERS, PEEACHEKS AND PEOPLE 

Kiver counties, and on arriving at a county town 
found the court just assembling, and a great con- 
course of people from all tlie region round, gathered 
together in expectation of a trial which had excited 
very great interest in all the neighborhood. He 
entered the court-house, an extempore affair — ^for all 
the appurtenances of justice, like the speeches of 
that day and place, were improvised. The abode of 
justice was a log-cabin. On one side sat the judge, 
and the sheriff, shouting out "Oyez, oyez," proclaimed 
the opening of the court. Business was begun, and 
the docket regularly called ; and in process of time 
this case, so eagerly looked forward to, was put 
in course of trial ; the witnesses were called and 
examined, and the pleadings commenced. The case 
was a civil suit for damages for slander, brought by 
a poor orphan girl, whose fair name, her only posses- 
sion, had been defamed by the defendant, a wealthy 
man in that region. She had no kinsmen who could 
revenge this great wrong by personal prowess, by 
the strong hand, as the custom of the country would 
ordinarily have required ; and the spirited young 
girl found herself perforce left to the slow resource 
of the law. The counsel for the plaintiff, as he ap- 
peared to my authority, was tall, straight, and rather 
slender ; of dark, or at least, swarthy features. Long 
black locks fell over his face, an eagle-eye looked 
keenly from beneath his forehead, and his costume, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 421 

as imjuridical a dress as could well be conceived, 
was that of a Imnter in those woods: buckskin 
hunting-shirt, with fringed border leggins and 
moccasins. He rose and commenced his speech. 
As he proceeded, the wild backwoodsmen, who had 
gatliered from their sports and antics about the 
court-house green, crowded around, and now breath- 
less, their attention riveted by the eloquence of the 
speaker. Every niche of the little building was 
crowded, and every window and doorway filled with 
absorbed listeners. As with imperative and heart- 
touching power the speaker described the helpless 
loneliness of the orphaned maiden his client, her sad 
isolation within the broad and busy world, judge, 
and clerk, and jury, and audience, were subdued 
with irrepressible emotion. And again, as he as- 
sailed the man who attempted to defile her reputa- 
tion, it seemed as if a tornado of fire were drying up 
all the streams. As the hot and scorching wind 
of his sarcasm and invective swept through the 
audience, their eyes flashed and their bosoms heaved ; 
he carried their very souls captive, and every man of 
them made the orphan's cause his own. So utterly 
did the assembly pass beneath the influence and into 
the spirit of that indignant and terrible denunciation, 
that had the slanderer been on the spot it is very 
doubtful whether he would have left the place alive. 
And when the words of this backwoods counsel 



422 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

were ended, the jury, without retiring from their 
seats, brought in a verdict for heavy damages. 

Some years thereafter, and jnst subsequently to the 
war of 1812, this same writer had occasion to be in 
the State of Indiana, and was near one of Harrison's 
battle-grounds. Early in the morning he rose and 
rode out to see the scene of the fight ; and fiist 
lie repaired to a S23ot where, underneath a broad and 
noble tree, was a little mound of earth without 
paling or defence, and with no stone to mark the 
head of him who rested there — for he had come 
to visit the grave of the eloquent advocate whom he 
had heard in southern Kentucky. Here lay the 
successful lawyer, the all-powerful orator, the brave 
soldier, the noble and upright man, the husband 
of the sister of Chief Justice Marshall, the man who 
had held Aaron Burr at bay, and who opposed and 
exposed the plots with which that arch seducer was 
wiling away honest citizens to treason and death ; 
the equal antagonist of Henry Clay, and who, if in- 
stead of falling at the battle of Tippecanoe, he had 
lived as long as Clay, would have won as high, if not 
a higher place, than did even that great orator of 
the West. Such was he who is yet familiarly s]3oken 
of and cherished in memory throughout all the West 
as Jo Hamilton Daviess, one of the noblest, most lofty 
minded, loftily and daringly ambitious, and yet one 
of the most simple-hearted and truthful of all the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 4:23 

eminent men tliat the fruitful border land has 
yet produced. 

I have mentioned the name of him who was then 
the rival of Daviess. 'No two men are more perfect 
representatives and ideals of that western mind whose 
qualities and productions I have feebly endeavored 
to describe. They came from the people, and were 
rocked in the cradle of adversity. Their eyes were 
disciplined in the rights, and their ears to the sounds 
of the forest. They were the ready and sensitive and 
diligent students of nature, in all her stern and harsh 
and rugged forms, and in all her sweet sylvan bean- 
ties. Waterfalls and the quiet voice of placid streams, 
the vivid verdure of the spring and the warm luxu- 
rious breath of summer ; the cold and the rigid frosts, 
the white still snow and the bitter furious storms of 
winter ; the sound of the battle too, and the alarms 
and perils of war — all these had trained them. They 
bore throbbing fiery hearts, often vivid with excite- 
ment and wild with passion; and their audiences 
were men of like mold and hearts, and like passions 
with themselves. Thus they found congenial mate- 
rials to be worked upon; free, open, sensitive and 
truthful souls, ready to receive the imj^ress of their 
burning genius ; and for men like them, starting in 
any professional career, either as lawyer, states- 
man or divine, no nobler or fitter materials could 
have been found. 



424 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

Tlius did Henry Clay embark "upon the career of 
a lawyer's life, liis heart in liis hand ; his natare in 
full and free sympathy with that of the masses ; al- 
ways true to freedom and justice, and no respecter 
of persons ; enforcing as occasion served that perilous 
duty of the emancipation of the negro race ; serving 
a Avrit for the keej)er of a dram-shop, upon a distin- 
guished lawyer, for drinks and liquor unpaid for, and 
so securing the undying hostility of an influential 
man. At one bound, he springs into the foremost 
rank of the legal talent of the day. He is little 
learned in books ; he has not moved even in the 
graceful society of his own native Yirginia ; it must 
be the movements of the trees bending in the wind 
that have taught him his grace and dignity of attitude 
and gesture. He has spent little time over the great 
works of Greek and Eoman orators ; it is his own 
earnest convictions, his piercing intelligence, his true 
sympathies and keen perceptions and instincts, that 
reveal to him what are the thoughts required, and 
the words in which they should be clothed. Thus 
profoundly true, and wondrously adapted to that 
community, he becomes the master of the intellect 
of the West. Stepping by a transition so natural and 
common, from law into politics, he enters the United 
States Senate, and either there or in the House 
becomes the head of the party who advocated the 
last war with Great Britain ; and boldly and deter 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 425 

minedly leads the van in upholding the government, 
in the face of many bitter adversaries and with many 
faint friends, and against the whole embodied opposi- 
tion of ]S^ew England. Sent to Europe as commis- 
sioner to conclude the treaty of Ghent, together with 
Adams, Bayard, Gallatin, and Russell, he is a 
controlling spirit in the negotiations ; and Lord 
Castlereagh, one of the most polished and finished 
of the courtiers of Europe, from youth familiar with 
the most refined and aristocratic society of the old 
world, pronounces this untutored child of the wilder- 
ness the most elegant and accomplished gentleman 
he had ever seen. Eeturning home, he passes from 
one post of honor and distinction to another, receiv- 
ing almost every office in the gift of the people 
except the highest ; and links his name, together 
with one or two others, to every great event and 
epoch in our history from that date almost to the 
present. 1820, 1832, 1850, found Clay and "Webster 
standing side by side ; foremost in withstanding 
every storm. Against each onset, they stood, like 
some colossal monumental forms, breasting the full 
tempest and malignity of its fury, sometimes so 
utterly hidden in the darkness and rage of the ele- 
ments, that they seem to be tottering and falling, to 
be ground to atoms far below. But they not only 
outlast, but govern the wild elements that assault 
them: they "ride the whirlwind and direct the 



426 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

storm." And as tliey thus stood so often, so shall 
stand for hundreds of years to come the names of the 
two great men, one from the "West and one from the 
ISTorth ; the graceful Ash of Kentucky, and the massive 
Granite Block of IS^ew Hampshire. 

Henry Clay had not the culture, the profound legal 
lore, the thoroughly disciplined logical faculty, of 
Webster ; nor his broad and dome-like brow, or the 
deep and cavernous eyes from which flashed forth 
such profound and mighty fires when he stood before 
Bench or Senate. But Henry Clay, graceful, agile, 
dextrous, full of fire and passion, yet with a will 
fixed as fate, a born commander of men — ^the joy 
and light of every social circle he entered ; loved by 
women as no man on this continent has ever been ; 
and for whose defeat in ISM I suppose more women's 
tears were shed than for any single event before — 
stands before us as the illustrious type and represen- 
tative of the eloquence of the western country. And, 
take him for all in all, as man of the people and 
orator of the people, whatever his short-comings or 
failings, it will be many a long year before we look 
upon his like again ! 

I cannot conclude without a brief reference to 
a few writers whose works embody most of the pecu- 
liar traits and oddities, fun, humor and wit, of the 
southwestern United States. These are. Col. T. B. 
Tliorpe, now of New York, Johnson Hooper of Ala- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 427 

bama, and Judge Longstreet of Mississippi. Thorpe's 
" Bee-Hunter " is an unrivalled sketcli of the times 
of the first pioneers in Arkansas. Judge Longstreet, 
whom I am half sorry, half glad, to own as a fellow 
Methodist preacher, is the author of "Georgia 
Scenes ;" and Johnson Hooper wrote that famous and 
most characteristic book, " The Adventures of Simon 
Suggs." These, and other works of these three 
gentlemen, contain the fullest and most characteristic 
delineations of the ways of thinking, acting and 
speaking in those distant regions, anywhere to be 
found in print. 



Lecture X. 
THE GREAT YALLEY; 

ITS PAST, ITS PRESENT, AND ITS FUTURE. 



THE GREAT YALLEY : 

ITS PASr, ITS PRESENT, AND ITS FUTURE. 

I HAVE now, in a series of isolated pictures, 
sketclied the history of the Mississippi Yallejjby a 
successive portraiture of its representative men and 
periods, during three centuries ; from the first voyages 
of the hardy Spanish discoverers who skirted its coasts, 
and their bold and ill-fated endeavors to penetrate 
the hostile xealms of its far interior, so long believed 
to blaze with unimaginable wealth of gold — so 
fearfully revealed as a fatal forest wilderness swarm- 
ing with desperate and warlike defenders — down to 
that strange enterprise of Aaron Burr, which in so 
many points of wild and hopeless absurdity, of vision- 
ary hardihood, of unscrupulous, conscienceless wicked- 
ness, and disregard of rights human or divine, 
resembles the early inroads of the Spaniard ; — and 
down to those other crusades, longer in continuance, 
scarcely less perilous for hardship and danger, and 
immeasurably loftier in spirit and in aim, the wan- 
dering self-denying missionary lives of the pioneer 
preachers — the worthy successors of Marquette, of 
Breboeuf and of Jaques. 



432 PIONEERS, PliEACHERS AlTD PEOPLE 

It remains, in the concluding lecture, to sum up 
the whole in such a manner as may group into one 
single picture, the figures, the light and shade, the 
distance and the foreground of these several sketches 
— to treat what I will call the nation of the Great Yal- 
lej, as one ; to follow its history from the end of the 
series of delineations I have given, down to the pre- 
sent ; and to essay the far more venturesome task of 
tracing some outline, or I should rather say of 
indulging in some dream — of its unknown future. 

In thus attempting to fix the collective traits and 
total significance of the Yalley and its people, let 
me ask the reader first to observe what that people 
is ; what manner of race of men is that of the Yal- 
ley. We have already studied them by classes, and 
by thought ; but what are they historically — etlino- 
logically ? 

It is a most ancient practice, to begin every his- 
tory at the Creation — a practice honored by great 
votaries, from the times of the antique chroniclers of 
Germany, and the monkish Latin historians of the 
middle ages, down to that eminent authority, Herr 
Professor von Poddingkopf, so delightfully cited by 
the most eminent and the latest departed of all the 
American prose writers, the genial and beloved 
Irving. But I shall not go back so far ; not quite 
back to the flood. 

In Africa and in Asia, and in America too, there 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 433 

have existed civilizations more or less exalted iii 
grade, and lasting in endurance. But the works of 
the mound-builders of the "West — for our cycle of 
allusions may begin at the very point whither it is 
at last to bring us — and the Aztecs of the south, the 
Egyptians and Ethopians, the Assyrians, Persians, 
Hindoos, Chinese — all the monuments of their arts 
and arms, their codes of laws and systems of thought, 
have passed either into utter oblivion, complete de- 
struction, a stiff immovable catalepsy not deserving 
the name of life, or a suj^erannuated and decrepit 
age. 

But that race, whatever its earlier designations, 
which was the parent of the various European 
families of men, possessed higher qualities. It may 
not have been superior to others in stature, or strength, 
or beauty, in force or acuteness of intellect, perha]3S 
not always in purity of morals or in religious truth. 
But in one thing it has demonstrated itself superior: 
in the capacity of unlimited and universal improve- 
ment. Through the vicissitudes of ages, under num- 
berless phases of development, and despite many 
periods of torpidity and even of retrogression, one 
people has as it were evolved from within itself ano- 
ther, and always a better. 

The genius of civilization, having done his utmost 
with Egyptains and Assyrians, led the Greeks and 
the Eomans to far higher summits of intellectual 

19 



434 PIONEERS, PKEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

achievement and of etliical knowledge. Tlien Cliris- 
tianity, in like manner, after experiment and failure 
in Asia, transferred the centres of her dominion 
to European soil. From the Christian Era, the 
history of Europe is the history of human progress. 
Among the nations of Europe, the Germanic civiliza- 
tion has been of a higher moral tone and a more 
deeply formed institutional character, than the Latin. 
And of the Germanic nations, that branch which 
became the Anglo-Saxon and then the English, 
stands this day foremost of all. And — now at last 
returning to this continent — the Anglo-American 
nation, a new nation, is evolved as it were from 
within the bosom of the English nation, by that 
strange process wdiich, a long array of precedents 
assures us, places every such latest-born people upon 
a higher level of existence than that of its parent — 
there to exemplify some still greater principle, 
to teach some still loftier lesson of destiny and of 
progress. Last of all, there has arisen within this 
mighty Yalley, streaming over the bordering Alle- 
ghanies, pushing westward by the side of the great 
northern Lakes, disembarking on the sandy shore of 
the Gulf, or struggling up the yellow fiood of the 
Mississippi, yet one more nation within a nation; 
and now in the basin of the Great Kiver is abiding 
and increasing a multitude already numerous enough 
to wield tlie political destinies of our land, and in 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 435 

possession of opportunities never before in reacli of 
any human community on this eartli, for aehieving 
eminence in all that humanity desires of happiness, 
nobility and goodness. 

In historic descent these are the foremost children 
of men ; the youngest sons, the Eenjamins of old 
mother earth ; and truly they are planted in a heri- 
tage well worthy of a parent's or a brother's partial 
fondness. As Benjamin's mess was five times that of 
any of his brethren, so is the vast and fair domain of 
the Mississippi Yalley — including as it naturally does 
the Gulf States — three times as extensive as the At- 
lantic slope, and somewhat less than twice as exten- 
sive as the third great natural division of our terri- 
tory, the Pacific slope. I need not compare its 
w^ealth of soil and climate and rivers and metals, to 
theirs. 

God reserved this goodly land for those who hold 
it now. Many were the bold voyagers of antiquity ; 
but none until Columbus was directed across the 
western sea to America. Enough there were of hardy 
explorers among the sons of Spain, and enough of 
wise and strong men, able to found and to govern 
new kingdoms ; but none of them were to establish 
themseh'es here. The traders and the soldiery of 
France were many and hardy and brave, and her 
Jesuits and Franciscans, with all the zeal that the 
love of souls and the desire of martyrdom coulil 



436 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

inspire, labored for years among the forest tribes; 
and the pliant genius and dextrous skill of her set- 
tlers almost fused the civilized and savage nations 
into one. But this splendid domain was not for 
France. E'or was it even to become a colony of the 
British empire ; a possession of the resolute Anglo- 
Saxon men, who, if any of the European kingdoms, 
were fitted to hold and to govern it. All these 
claimants, one after another, sought to establish a 
title ; but each and every claim was disallowed by 
him who ruleth both the affairs of the children of 
men and the armies of heaven. This land was not a 
land for Spain, nor France nor England. A separate 
race had been elected and consecrated to the sublime 
task of redeeming its vast expanse from solitude and 
barbarism; of conquering it for a cultivated hu- 
manity ; of making it the home of happy multi- 
tudes ; a broad foundation for God's church ; a new 
field for the solution of man's threefold problem, his 
relations to God, to the earth, and to his neighbor. 
Neither the spirit of effete feudalism, nor the stron- 
ger spirit of a ceremonial church ; neither the des- 
potic power of a monarchy ruling under the civil 
law, nor the irresponsible destructive sway of any 
band of greedy traders, was to possess the new realm ; 
but that strong off-shoot of the noble old Anglo- 
Saxon stem, which has well been called the Anglo- 
American, was to have and to rule it; and a long 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 437 

and severe discipline was that wliicli had prepared it. 
The people of England, rising slowly and stubbornly 
upward from the slavery of the Norman conquest ; 
helped unconsciously and unintentionally by the 
extorted gift of the Great Charter ; beginning to con- 
trol even the brutal bull-dog strength of the Tudor 
monarch s ; then rising and slaying a senselessly 
oppressive king — a people taught by the sweet 
sounds of old Chaucer ; around whose path had been 
thrown the strange and mystic imaginings of Spenser ; 
who had listened to the " native wood-notes wild," of 
Shakspeare; and who had found even a nobler poet, 
and a fearless and mighty defender, in John Milton ; 
who had learned wisdom of Francis Bacon ; whose 
imao:inations and consciences were at once entranced 
and convinced by the wondrous spiritual dream of 
Bunyan ; and whose reason had been instructed by 
the clear understanding and acute philosophy of 
Locke : this people had here and there ripened to the 
point of capacity and desire for self-government, 
under the double and opposite stimulus of the lasting 
Puritan leaven which the Heformation had diffused 
in England, and of the grinding and intensifying 
tyranny of the Tudors and Stuarts. 

Thus it came to pass that there went out from Eng- 
land that small body of strong men, who "builded 
wiser than they knew," and founded this nation. 
Well trained in cool self-reliance, iron courage, 



438 PI0NEEE8, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

impregnable perseverance ; strong and ready of hand 
and of lieart, wise in tlionglit, learned in tliat plii- 
losopliy wliicli is most readily transmuted into right 
and efficient action, and above all, clothed and pene- 
trated and borne onward by a strength incredible to 
those not of them, the strength of Faith in God — they 
sailed away across the sea. With all these high and 
noble traits, unconsciously the greatest statesmen on 
earth, having prepared the iron pillars of their little 
nation of a hundred men in their ship, they landed in 
America, with the fabric of their church and State 
all ready prej^ared for erection. 

And as in after years the posterity of these small 
colonies entered within the vast inland realm of 
which I am speaking — as the hostile savages faded 
away, and the forests began to fall, and the sunlight 
to work its wondrous chemistries upon the wealthy 
soil beneath, and bountiful mother Earth bared her 
bosom to the plough and hoe — how marvellously did 
that Providence which had planted them there, provide 
one aid after another, coordinate with the increasing 
needs of the increasing nation ! 

Small centres of inhabitants, feeble, unconnected, 
isolated, mere points of crystallization u]3on the vast 
expanse, lie like distant dots along the great rivers, or 
in the wide woods. It is intercourse that consoli- 
dates a nation. Life blood must circulate. A huge 
inert overgrown body dies of mere magnitude. Bat 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 489 

how shall this indispensable need be supplied? 
Antiquity hath no answer to the problem, or the 
Koman empire might have held together. Modern 
science has no suggestion to make : horses and men 
are the swiftest and strongest messengers, except the. 
inconstant, treacherous winds. But James Watt 
studied the boiling of a teakettle, and as in the 
oriental tale there rose up from the thin vapor of a 
sealed jug a mighty giant, so did the genius of the 
Scotch mechanician evolve from the vapors of that 
mean vessel the superhuman* might of the steam 
engine. Then one of our own countrymen, laying in 
turn his modifying hand upon the volatile essence of 
fire and water, constrains its giant strength into the 
service of the steamboat — and the wants of the nation 
of the valley are supplied! Again, as population 
thickens and wealth increases, and men begin more 
and more, after the mysterious word of the prophet, 
to go to and fro in the earth, Kobert Stephenson 
invents the locomotive ; and straightway the hurry- 
ing millions of the Yalley, no longer confined to the 
channels of the rivers, flit over the mountains or 
through them and across the plain, on that stronger 
and closer network of civilization, and of interwoven 
civic strength, the railroad. And last of all, within 
these last years we have the electric telegraph, which 
may fitly be likened to that great system called the 
sympathetic nerve, which flashes hither and thither 



440 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

througli the body the constant sustaining streanas 
of nnconscions life ; which maintains the health and 
action of all the wondrous processes, and keeps all 
alive, but which the imperial, central, conscious will 
cannot reach. For so does the little telegraphic wire, 
flashing endless communication hither and thither all 
over the land, hold us, mind with mind, in a compre- 
hensive, indissoluble unitary life. Ah, it is in such 
pecuniary enterprises as these, set up in the fervent 
worship of Mammon, that we shall find a power, all 
quiet and unrecognized, but with all the unimaginable 
strength of a truly Divine messenger, infinitely more 
potent against the rising yells of that infernal army 
of Disunion, this day thickening around us, than in 
any such old world fancies as patriotism and humanity, 
justice and forbearance ! 

Nor has less wisdom or kindness been shown in 
providing for the needs of the intellectual and reli- 
gious faculties. I have already referred to the zeal 
and intrepid j)erseverance of the ancient Catholic 
missionaries, whose not unworthy successoi^. Father 
De Smet, Bishop Elanchet and their brethren are still 
faithfully and efiiciently laboring among the fierce 
tribes of the distant ISTorthwest^ I have also spoken 
of the Protestant missionaries who quickly followed 
on over the mountains, to look after their small flocks 
in the wilderness. Tlie minister and the schoolmas- 
ter were provided, as the rising generation began to 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 441 

need their aid. The fierce stern exigencies of their 
perilons life in tlie wilderness trained them in quick- 
ness of eje and readiness of hand, in prompt and 
loftj courage, in fruitfulness of resource and a hardy 
self-reliant perseverance that never yielded. While 
thus the hard school of necessity trained them, by 
rude, incessant, inevitable lessons, into a rough but 
noble strength, it was the duty of the teacher and of 
the missionary, not so much to excite the forces of 
nerve and soul — for that external stimulus so com- 
monly needed elsewhere had here been supplied by 
nature and the wilderness and the savage, and mind 
and soul were here all awake, full of force and acti- 
vity — but to direct, to moderate, to restrain. The 
work is prosperously in progress. The school-houses, 
log-built and humble though they were, have yet 
been the centres of a continual and increasing diffu- 
sion of knowledge and of goodness. In those 
obscure edifices, all the week, the teacher led his 
youthful charge in the paths of learning ; and on the 
seventh day, the same lowly building became the 
sanctuary of the Most High, and the backwoods 
preacher expounded to the same children and to 
their parents also, the message of God, preparing 
them both for this life and for that which is to come. 
But in thus seeking to sketch the characteristic 
elements of the people of the Great Yalley, I must 
not omit to allude to one important feature, viz., the 
19* 



442 PIONEERS, PKEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

mingled ciirrents of its blood. The main stock is 
Anglo-Saxon. Important infusions of Scotcli and 
Irish blood were in the veins of very many of its 
best and bravest men. There has always been some 
small admixture from amongst the French of Illinois 
and Louisiana. Scarce a tinge of Spanish blood can 
be traced. On one of the outskirts or appendages 
of the Yalley — the peninsula of Florida — a colony 
of fifteen hundred Greeks was once j^lanted, whose 
blood still runs in the veins of some of the best fami- 
lies of St. Augustine. A somewhat more diffused 
intermixture may be followed, from those Huguenot 
French who settled along the Atlantic coast from 
Boston to Charleston. Great numbers of Germans 
have long contributed toward this miscellaneous 
national stock the solid or the graceful traits of the 
old Teutonic character. In the JSTorth may be traced 
colonies of Norwegians, of Dutch, a few Swedes and 
Danes. There has been no perceptible addition of 
Italian blood ; nor of that of the Aborigines ; for 
the border intercourse of centuries has been bloody 
and murderous, with a strange, sad uniformity. 'No 
modification is yet visible, and let us hope that none 
will be, from the last strange immigration of brutal 
Chinamen to our distant Pacific coast. 

And thus we find the western people to-day, not 
one of those pure races whose uniform destiny seems 
to be to disappear, but a community of bloods rather 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 443 

than a race, one of those homogeneous mixtures of 
character not found except in these latter days of his- 
tory, whose Talue and power amongst the great 
republic of nations no precedents enable us to ascer- 
tain, but for whom there are many reasons to antici- 
pate a grand and noble future. 

Having thus endeavored to represent the original 
and added constituents of the People of the Great Yal- 
ley, let us next observe them and their landed common- 
wealths, at the point to which they have now attained. 

Imagine, therefore, a spectator — yourself, if you 
will — with an ideal vision broad and keen enough to 
embrace and discern so much, and lifted high up in 
air, even so that you may look far abroad over all the 
Great Yalley, and those adjuncts or appendixes which 
naturally and politically belong with it, namely the 
Gulf States and Michigan. And observe, being in 
spirit with this visionary beholder of mine, the mul- 
tiplied features of power and grandeur presented to 
your eye. From the white and sunny sands of Flo- 
ridian Cape Sable and the sea-washed little Wreck 
City of Key "West, to the cold remote northwestern 
village of wintry log-built forest-circled Pembina 
and the improvised mining towns of Aurora and 
Denver, raised as it were in a night by the strong 
sorcery of Mammon on barren hill-sides all treeless 
and forlorn : from smoke-canopied Pittsburg, grimy 
dwelling of forges and mills, on the antique site of 



4:4:4: PIONEERS, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

vanished Fort Du Quesne, to the struggling semi 
prosperous frontier town of Brownsville, where 
Texans look with faces sour and contemptuous, yet 
eager and expectant, to the wide territories of Mexico, 
and where there seems to prevail a chronic border 
warfare, the frictional irritation between chafing 
races : from the skirting AUeghanies on the east to 
the interrupted but sufficient ramparts of the Rocky 
Mountains in the West, and from the warm blue of 
the salt Gulf to the cooler waters and hues of the 
great northern chain of fresh-water seas: over all 
this vast domain, grown up to its present level of 
magnificent power within three-quarters of a century 
— ^the lifetime of one man — how wonderful, how 
mighty, how complicated, are the masses and forms 
and movements of human life and labor ! 

Twelve millions of souls are fulfilling their desti- 
nies within the space of this great panorama ; 
belonging to sixteen sovereign States, and five 
younger sisters — ^Territories, some of them already 
impatiently knocking at the doors of Congress for 
admission into the Union of their elder sisters ; and 
if I do not add to this number that of their brethren 
beyond the western mountains, the half-million and 
more of California, and the thousands of Utah, and 
Oregon and Washington Territory, it is for the 
sake of geographical rather than logical correctness, 
for those Pacific States are most properly out- 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 4:45 

skirts, suburbs, advanced posts of the great bive of 
men in the Yalley. 

Amid this vast and busy tbrong of men whose 
multiplied labors have already done so much to 
change the dark unbroken forest, and silent open 
prairie into a garden of God, are efficiently operating 
the manifold engineries of civilized life. To and fro, 
along the thousands of miles of the vast river system, 
are rushing a thousand steamers, from eleven hundred 
tons burden downward, in place of the little awk- 
ward Orleans, of a hundred tons, launched by Fulton 
and Livingston at Pittsburg, in 1812. The lake fieet, 
over and above this, is of twelve hundred vessels and 
more; and from the great southern marts of the 
Yalley, another vast auxiliary ocean fleet brings in 
or bears away an annual mass of imports and exports 
of a hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars. 
The network of railroads has but barely begun to 
knit itself through and over a few portions of the 
Yalley ; but this beginning is a giant one. Over 
thirteen thousand miles of railroad, the more eager 
spirits of the Yalley fly hither and thither on errands 
of business, or affection, or pleasure. 

In 1776, -the Baptist John Hickman first began to 
labor as a Protestant minister west of the Alleghanies. 
ISTow, in seventeen thousand churcl^s, of twenty sects, 
the Word of God is statedly dispensed to an average 
of something like five millions of regular hearers. 



4:4:6 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

"When or where the first log school-house was 
erected, and the first little platoon of recruits of 
learning 

" Discharged their a-b ab's against the dame," 

— or master, I cannot say, except that it was within 
the last eighty years. But now, a hundred and fifty 
colleges crown woody heights, or shelter themselves 
in retired valleys ; and in these, and in fifty thousand 
public and private schools, nearly two millions of 
youth are receiving a moral and intellectual train- 
ing whose depth, and breadth, and thoroughness is 
yearly greater, and w^hich yearly better prepares its 
graduates to plunge out into the great battle of life — 
to perform wisely and well his or her single duty as 
a citizen oi' a wife. 

Once more : let me repeat a few similar statistics — 
dry kernels, but, to a reflective mind, nevertheless, 
the seeds of infinite conceptions of grandeur and 
beauty — relative to one section of the great domain 
of the Yalley — the ITorthwest. This is the tract 
between the Ohio, the Lakes, and the Mississippi, 
which contains two hundred and sixty thousand 
square miles, and which Washington, who early 
owned lands within it, called a " western worldP 

A hundred years ago — in 1751 — it contained five 
little French towns, with about one thousand inhabi- 
tants, all nestled down together, like a little group of 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 447 

timid lambs, "withiu a hidden valley in the southwest 
of Illinois — and no other European settlements. The 
first State admitted into the Union from it was Ohio, 
in 1802. The earliest English settlements within 
Ohio were made in 1774, but none was of any im- 
portance imtil the settlement of Marietta, in 1788, 
when tiie English inhabitants may have numbered 
five thousand. Little more than three-quarters of a 
century has passed, and into what gigantic propor- 
tions has this section of the great Yalley already 
grown ! Five great States occupy its territory ; not 
less than seven millions of p>eople inhabit it ; every 
year its farms produce not far from three hundi-ed 
millions of dallars in value ; its mines, eighty mil- 
lions ; its lumber, seventy millions ; its twenty thou- 
sand and more of manufactories, a hundred and thirty 
millions; its fisheries, three millions. It has nine 
thousand miles and more of railroads ; fourteen hun- 
dred miles of canals ; seven thousand miles of tele- 
graph. It contains two hundred banks, with twenty 
millions of capital. Its whole material extent, real 
and personal property together, is reckoned to be 
worth more than one and three-quarters hillions of 
dollars. 

But this startling expansion is not to be reckoned 
by business and statistics alone. The Northwest has 
built eight thousand churches, which will hold four 
millions of people ; fifty colleges, and twenty-five 



448 PIONEERS, PKEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

thousand schools, where are studying a million and a 
half of pupils ; and it supports a thousand news- 
papers, twelve hundred libraries more or less public, 
and scientific and literary societies innumerable. 

Again, a yet more wondrous exemplification of 
the exuberant, gigantic vital strength of this great 
inland realm is aflorded by the growth of its cities. 
In former ages of the world, many enormous cities 
were raised up by despotic jDOwer, or increased during 
centuries by a slow process of accretion. But in our 
great Yalley it is as if the strong, rich soil gave birth 
to the sudden vastness of the marts, that rise almost 
like exhalations on lake-side and river-bank. A 
proud and glorious instance do they furnish of the 
superiority of the power of a free and enterprising 
people, over the spiritless, slavish obedience of Asiatic 
subjects, or of monarchical conservatisms. 

Across the northei'n portion of the great Yalley, if 
you glance upon the map, you can easily trace two 
great lines of cities dotting, like great jewels, the 
chain of trade and intercourse between East and 
West. The northern line, from Bufi'alo by Cleveland 
and Detroit, ends at Chicago ; the southern line 
begins with Pittsburg, and extends, by Cincinnati 
and Louisville, to St. Louis. The nine cities of the 
first have increased their total population, during the 
last ten years, from 159,000 to 454,000 ; and the nine 
of tlie second line, during the same period, from 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 449 

335,000 to 600,000. The most wondrous of them all, 
Chicago, which in 1840 had 4,800 inhabitants — 
which in 1830 had 70 inhabitants — ^had last year 
125,000. 

In what other way could I set before you what the 
Mississippi Yalley now is ? Mere statistics, you wilL 
say ; uninteresting figures ; dry bones of information. 
But, as I said before, it is these very figures which 
are, if rightly viewed, instinct with whatever is gi'and 
and marvellous. "Within this brief period — for one 
human life, long though it may be, is brief enough 
compared with the age of this world — within this 
brief period, the Nation of the Yalley has grown up 
with such a portentous speed and strength as reminds 
us of that gigantic fountain which pours suddenly a 
full-grown river from the unknown caverns of the 
lower earth : from nothing, to myriads of souls ; from 
nothing, to millions of money ; from nothing, to an 
infinity of strength and power, and to a high grade 
of culture and excellence. Thus I state the summary, 
by comparisons, in general terms. But it is the 
scries of arithmetical numbers that affords the most 
tangible basis for thought — the firmest and clearest, 
and, indeed, the only valuable conceptions, upon 
such a point as this. 

And now I have passed over two parts of this sum- 
ming up. I have examined this western race, and 
inquired what is it by blood and by constituent parts; 



150 PIONEEES, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

and I have sought to indicate, by dint of some mathe- 
matical totals, some general idea of what it is now, in 
number, strength, and attainment. And it remains 
to essay a more dangerous task — to speak of its 
future. I am no prophet, either, to promise good 
things, or to threaten evil ; nor do I pretend to any 
wonderful measure, even of merely human prescience. 
All that I venture to attempt is, to state obvious 
meanings of visible phenomena — of those indications 
which the great Master of Life has given to us on 
purpose that we might reason on them and conclude 
from them. 

The Yalley is to be, as it has been, a great harbor 
of refuge for the poor and oppressed of other lands. 
It is the rightful glory of our Anglo-American race 
to have opened welcoming arms to the refugees of 
every nation. "No thought of selfish isolation ever 
entered the hearts of the men that inhabit the 
unparalleled region of the "West. They justly felt 
that union and cooperation, not isolation and exclu- 
siveness, is the principle of human progress. Tlie 
Gentile Tyrian, ever under the stern and uncom- 
promising polity of the Jewish theocracy, brought his 
tribute of skill and of splendid gifts to the great 
temple of Solomon ; Ophir sent its gold, the far Indies 
their precious stones; and Candace, queen of 
Ethiopia, from the furthest ends of the earth, came 
on an acceptable pilgrimage to the shrine of the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 451 

Hebrews' God and the throne of the Hebrew king. 
All commerce, all agriculture, all art, laid their con- 
tributions upon the hallowed mount where God's 
home was builded of old. And thus to-day, in this 
vaster and immeasurably more wondrous temple — 
this great edifice of free civil and religious polity 
tlie strength and beauty of the wealthy Yalley — shall 
all people and all tongues worship, and ofifer upon 
its altars their various offerings, of all the good gifts 
with which God has endowed them. Principally, 
these thronging thousands contribute of their physical 
strength. Canals are to be digged ; railroads to be 
builded ; all that mass of material improvements to 
be perfected, which is the dream of the practical 
statesmanship of our Union. These are needed 
before our land shall attain its ideal condition of a 
totality of natural gifts and forces, modified bj 
human skill — ere it will yield the greatest possible 
amount of fruits to its people. And thus have long 
been pouring in the legions of a great industrial army, 
from Ireland, Germany, ]!!Torway, Sweden, Denmark, 
Holland ; the men whose strong arms and laborious 
habits render them competent to execute precisely 
those masses of mere detail and drudgery so neces- 
sary to the broad schemes of the Anglo-American 
brain, but so distasteful to his preferences for mental 
labor, for organizing, for directing ; for thinking, in 
short, that others may do. It is this long succession 



452 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

of imn.'Igrants wliicli most singularly marks the wis- 
dom of that mighty Hand which guides the fates of 
the Yalley. The first generation furnishes laborers. 
But their children, half-children of the soil, and 
receiving the powerful impress of the invigorating 
new world, and of its active minds, at once rise 
upward and become farmers or mechanics; while 
the cohorts of the railroad and the scattered ranks of 
hired laborers are recruited from new arrivals. 

Yet, again, the same over-ruling wisdom provided 
that this innumerable host of people, of strange man- 
ners and religion, would not find the portals of the 
Yalley thrown open to them until the great pillars 
of its commonwealth — its religious and political 
forms — were powerfully and permanently adjusted. 
JSTot until the proper and distinctive Anglo-American 
forms of worship and of society were already received 
and vigorously in operation, did the foreign bands find 
room for the soles of their feet. Then, after the new 
people had grown large enough and strong enough 
for the action of the peculiar power of absorption and 
integration with itself which marks the Anglo-Saxon 
race, came the gradual influx of the strangers, pour- 
ing steadily in, fusing and disappearing within the 
ranks of the host already there. 

Nearly four-fifths of the foreign population of our 
country has arrived upon our shores since 1830 ; and 
more than half of its total of three millions, since 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 453 

18^0 Yet how few are those who apprehend any 
dangi J! to our nation or to its valuable traits or pri- 
vileg' % from this great transfusion of new blood ! 
Who needs to doubt or to fear for our future ? Many, 
at different times, have been terrified at the ruin sup- 
posed to await the land from the spread of Eomanism 
and of its attendant civil despotisms among us. But 
how groundless an apprehension ! "VThen Jesuitism 
had the land all to itself, it was unable to keep it. 
Eome, unopposed, backed by the throne of France, 
aided by the subtlest dij)lomacy, the greatest generals, 
the wisest statesmen, long endeavored to retain her 
hold upon the soil — but in vain. And when she thus 
failed, is it for a moment to be supposed that she 
iOAild succeed now ? Instead of the scattered super- 
stitious barbarians, herded into the x^riestly fold by 
the Catholic missionaries, and with but little more 
consciousness of why it was done than so many cat- 
tle would have had, they must now encounter a 
population ten thousand fold greater, intelligent, 
acute, trained in beliefs and — what is much more — 
in feelings, instincts and modes of thought and action 
expressly opposed or utterly foreign to them ; large, 
broad modes of mental action which their little hier- 
archic formulas can neither contain nor cope with ; 
the vivid force of that shrewd circumspect self-relf- 
ance which has been nurtured by the strong youth 
and toilsome adventurous manhood of the West ; the 



454 PIONEERS, PREACHEES AITD PEOPLE 

unwearied, incessant, increasing flow of knowledge^ 
of goodness, of pnritj, of intellectual force, supplied 
from so many thousands of fountains, in school-house, 
college, and church. Is it to be feared that such 
men as the Romanists will reduce the "West beneath 
the sway of the Papacy? Shall we not rather 
ingulf and assimilate them, priests, churches, com- 
municants and all ? Can the Homan Bishop rule the 
huge and rapid waves of this great ocean of human 
life? It was only Christ whose word made the 
winds to cease and the sea to be calm ; — even the 
apostle, essaying to j)ass to his Master, would have 
sunk for lack of faith; — and surely, surely these 
deceived apostles of a mistaken faith will quickly 
disa]3pear beneath the swelling flood. 

For my own part, I have no fear. It is true that 
once I spoke in the usual glowing terms, of the great 
battle of Armageddon that was to be fought in the 
Yalley of the Mississippi, and of the dangers to 
which freedom "was then to be exposed from the on- 
slaughts and invasions of foreigners and Eomanists. 
But study and observation have convinced me to the 
contrary. How frequent is the remark, even among 
Romanists themselves, that their church only keeps 
the immigrating generation ! The first comers may 
themselves ever remain faithful and subservient sons 
of the church. But the attachment of their children 
is feeble and wavering; the grandchildren almost 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 455 

always lapse from their connection with it, and the 
fourth generation are commonly embosomed within 
some Protestant organization. Iso ; Eomanists will 
never change ns. We shall assimilate them, and 
shall do good both to them and to ourselves in the 
process. The religions formulas of Europe can no 
more be established upon the soil of this country 
than could the structure of one of its mediaeval des- 
potisms be transported hither and maintained among 
us. Facts forbid such a belief; reason, forbids it; 
Faith, Hope, and Charity, all three, forbid it. 

Let them come, therefore ; there is room for them 
all, and we need them all. They will not defile or 
lower us ; we shall purify and elevate them. They 
come into a purer atmosphere, upon a higher plane of 
life ; their necessary and unavoidable movement will 
be upward. Even Mormonism, which occupies one 
of the outlying suburbs of the Yalley of the Miss- 
issippi — Mormonism, one of the greatest if not the 
most important fact of our age and country — dark, 
debasing and fearful as its politics and morality may 
be — I believe to be a real step in advance for most of 
those who remove to its desert home. And it seems 
to me that few will fail to reach the same conclusion, 
who shall carefully consider whence these people 
come, what their characteristics'and qualities are, what 
the new circumstances are in which they find them- 
selves placed, and the fact that for the first time in 



466 PIONEEES, PEEACHEES AND PEOPLE 

tlieir history or that of their ancestors, they arc here 
brought into ai^proximately true, healthy and legi- 
timate relations with the earth and labor. For God's 
great earthly instrument for elevating man in the 
scale of social being is labor. Men must set out 
from earth, to reach heaven. He is the true son of 
Earth — the true Antseus ; he gains new and ever 
greater strength by being dashed into rude forcible 
contact with her rugged bosom, and every rebound 
carries him fm-ther upward. And these Mormons, 
ho-svever isolated from our institutions, from the aids 
of our social, intellectual, religious influences, are at 
least starting from the right point. They are with 
few exceptions an industrious and even laborious peo- 
ple, frugal and honest and honorable within the 
important range of the minor practical ethics. ITow 
God leaves none of his children alone ; and thus we 
are in duty bound to hope and believe that in pro- 
cess of time old mother Earth, and their labor and 
industry and economy in dealing with her, will little 
by little lift them upw^ard until at last they will 
come to the full and perfect stature of American 
Christian citizens. Therefore it is that I have not the 
least objection to have hundreds, thousands, and 
tens of thousands, flocking to the Great Salt Lake. 
Through whatever ill-favored or perilous phases, the 
movement must and will result in good. 

Of all the various races whose blood minofles in the 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 457 

Great Yalley, or whose members inhabit it, one only 
remains hopelesly mitamed, imtamable, savage. -Tlie 
Indian alone defies the operation of the great princi- 
ciple of interfusion of bloods. Amidst the comitless 
thousands of whites, or rather, just before their 
advancing, line, he remains an isolated, solitary being. 
He stalks across the stage of thought or of history 
alone. " Indian file," we say ; and it is singly, as we 
thns describe single physical movements, that we ever 
think of him, either in jom-neying, in character, or 
action. The Indian can never be civilized. He has 
not the faculties by which civilization lays hold npon 
a man to modify and to cultivate him. For w^e im- 
prove, through persistent patient labor, and through 
the affections. Were it not for the power and the 
habit of constant industry,' were it not for the sweet 
fetters of love and duty to parents, family, children, 
friends, what would make you and me stronger or 
wiser, or better, or more useful — if we are so — from 
year to year? Scarcely would the united strength of 
religious obligation and of self-love avail to accom- 
plish it without these balancing encircling forces. 
These supply us with the quiet incessant stimulus 
which holds us steadily, though with unperceived 
strength, to our destined line of labor. But these 
the solitary Indian scarcely feels at all ; and, there- 
fore, the Indian must perish. We cannot absorb him, 
cannot render him an integral part of our own 
20 



458 PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE 

society. We drive him further westward, fight him, 
murder him with whisky. Our missionaries labor 
amongst his decreasing bands with praiseworthy per- 
severance, but with an utterly hopeless prospect. 
God's law is against him. He cannot enter into our 
laborious civilization, he cannot live amongst it ; and 
he must needs disappear. 

I need scarcely refer to the outlandish barbarism 
and self-sufficient binitality of the strange incursion 
of Chinamen - into California. That distant State is 
no part nor outgrowth of the Yalley of the Missis- 
sippi, except in a very indirect and distant sense ; and 
if it were otherwise I could only say that perhaps 
this Chinese race has the least good and the most 
evil in it of any which might endeavor to unite with 
our own. But it is entirely improbable, and scarce 
possible that such a union should happen, in any mea- 
sure whatever. 

In thus recapitulating the admixture of races in the 
West, I must not omit to refer to the mingling of the 
eastern and southern Anglo-Americans with each 
other there, and with those of the northern half of 
the West. A quarter, almost, of the whole popula- 
tion of ]^ew England, has been drained out of it into 
new settlements. Her sons and daughters are ever 
moving westward, insomuch that whole villages may 
be found left with a strange over-proportion of elderly 
people in them. Over the mountains they go, 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 459 

teaching or trading, farming or preaching. The 
joiing maidens intermarry with the southerners or 
westerners, and the young men take to themselves 
wives of the daughters of the land. And thus 
are fused together the comparatively stiff and formal, 
though strong, practical, straightforward, acute and 
resolute qualities of the I^ew Englander, with the 
fiery, impulsive generosity, the passionate fervor, the 
indolence, the semi-tropical ease, of the far South, 
or the broad, strong, open, hearty geniality, some- 
times coarse, but always kind, of the more northern 
part of the "West. 

To speculate on future numerical totals would be 
lost time. There is no arithmetic of the future. Let 
us glance at data of a sort from which we can reason 
forward. Observe the material and physiological 
conditions for an improvable race, which are possessed 
by the people of the Yalley. 

A territory all but boundless ; a climate and a soil 
exuberant beyond all measure, in geniality and rich- 
ness ; a means of internal communication unprece- 
dented and unequalled in human history ; resources 
for material wealth utterly incalculable ; a freedom 
almost ideal, of thought, expression and action ; a 
predominant hereditary blood the best in the world ; 
a national training adapted to develop all the strong- 
est and best powers of humanity ; a gradual afflux of 
other races, so ordered and adjusted that the genial 



160 PIONEERS, PEEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

cheerfulness of one, the stern morality and strength 
of principle and shrewd practical energy of another, 
the gaiety and tireless industry of another, the lofty 
honor and daring bravery of another, shall all mingle 
together in the formation of one vast homogeneous 
race, a compound of many various human qualities — ■ 
and thus form the truest representative man on 
earth. Look, lastly, at the various instrumentalities 
and institutions which human experience has elabo- 
rated or Divine wisdom has ordained, as best for 
communicating and increasing and diffusing know- 
ledge, and goodness, and culture. Observe all this, 
and then say whether the nation of the great valley 
is not destined — so far as human foresight can deter- 
mine — to become a controlling force in our own great 
commonwealth, a wise, and just, and strong, and 
good community, happy at home, honored by all, 
sanctified and blessed by God — the foremost and high- 
est.among the sons of men, the latest, noblest expo- 
sition of the magnificent symmetry and beauty and 
strength of a rightly cultured humanity? 

No doubt the careful searcher may discern faults 
in the western character ; eccentricity, extravagance, 
materialism, recklessness, insubordination. But 
these errors may be shown to be the necessary logical 
conclusions of the long series of actual premises ; of 
the wild and dangerous training of this people, 
received while, as a people, yet in their early youth. 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 461 

They are faults very like those of a great, overgrown 
boy ; a creature often awkward, uncomfortable, even 
ridiculous, but who will speedily spread and harden 
into a stately and powerful man ; faults of strongly 
growing and vigorous youth, such as will often, by a 
singularly small modification, become the main vir- 
tues of manhood. They need not discourage the 
admirer of the western character, any more thau 
, should the dust of the race-course on the garment of 
the victor distress his congratulating friends. It is 
not on this earth, it is true, that anything can be per- 
fect, or can escape the small objections of the dilet- 
tante traveller, or come up to the rigid unpractical 
standard of that peculiarly ignorant man the theo- 
retical moralist. Nor can the Great Yalley nor its 
people. But when the circumstances are considered 
which have attended the growth of that people, and 
the results which it has achieved within these few 
years, the philanthropist, the statesman, the patriot 
will find very much greater cause to rejoice and be 
glad, than to lament and to fear. 

So far as human foresight can discern, a future of 
marvellous grandeur and power awaits the iN'ation of 
the Yalley. Its thronging, busy millions, masters of 
a wealth beyond counting, a nation well and w^isely 
trained, pouring abroad, over all the world, by many 
channels, fabulous masses of rich products, and 
gathering in the various wealth of all the world in 



4:62 PIONEERS, PKEACHERS AND PEOPLE 

return, may well look forward to tlie day wlien tliey 
shall rule the destinies of all the nation — nay, it may 
be, of all the continent. And while it is thus the 
seat of a vast political dominion, it may likewise, 
with no less reason, aspire to stand among the nations, 
a beautiful and noble monument of richly-cultured 
intellect — of strong, deep love — of true and lovely 
Christian goodness. It may justly and hopefully 
aspire to become the first, loftiest, grandest example' 
in all the long panorama of human history, of that 
grand and shapely thing which God would have 
every nation become: a fabric of beauty, strength 
and grace, far beyond any of the fanciful Utopias of 
philosophic schemers, or heathen or unchristian legis- 
lators ; in truth and soberness, the crown and glory 
of the whole earth. 

What dispensations the mysterious Governor of 
nations may have reserved for it, we know not. 
"We must wait for, and submit to the decrees of 
God; even should he have determined that the 
whole vast Yalley, like that dimly-fabled island 
of Atlantis, of which ancient geographers seem to 
speak, shall sink suddenly away, and give place to 
the dreary, barren fields of the ocean. Of this we 
know not ; of such things we cannot reason. There 
seems to be but one single event whose form we can 
imagine to see within the dim shadows of the com- 
ing years; but one single occurrence of which we 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 463 

may speak in anticipation, and to which we need to 
look with any fears, either for its own ngly linea- 
ments, or the baleful blight which it may possibly be 
fated to cast over the future fortunes of the multitudes 
in the Yalley. 

This is that hateful thing, whose name is to-day 
unfilially and impiously heard ever and anon, mut- 
tered in secret treason, or howled in the frenzy of 
public treason, by fools or traitors, North and South 
— the vile name of disunion. Let this Union be dis- 
solved, and farewell to all those fair dreams which 
my feeble words have so imperfectly and briefly 
striven to paint. If the Union is dissolved, no human 
power will ever reconstruct it; farewell to these 
United States, and, with them, to our grand pos- 
sessions of patriotic memories ; to the hard-fought 
Revolution ; to the wise counsels of Washington ; the 
inspiring oratory of so many heaven-gifted speakers ; 
to the warlike fame of so many glorious soldiers ; to 
the undying wisdom of Jefferson and of Hamilton, 
and so many more statesmen and legislators ; to all 
the historic treasures of the nation. For, I pray you, 
which of the mobs of little, feeble, squabbling States 
— "Sovereign States," forsooth! — would own them 
all ? Or by what rule should a dividend of them be 
made? or what distribution would be consented to? 

Is it indeed true that our nation cannot last one 
century ? Is our cohesive power already destroyed 'i 



464 PIONEERS, PEEACUERS AND PEOPLE 

Are we already rotten? Are our forbearance, our 
kindness, our brotherly love, so soon exhausted? 
Have we so quickly squandered our inheritance of 
traditions, of common blood, of common suffering 
and labor, of common interest, of common glory and 
prosperity, and must we so soon be scattered into a 
contemptible cliaos of amorphous, disintegrated, 
strengthless, political atoms ? 

I cannot believe it. I have heard — I still hear — 
all the miserable outcries of the villain horde that 
would do this devil's work. 1 have not patience, 
nor is it necessary to recite them here. But I still 
have faith unshaken in the trustworthiness of tlie 
American people — in their ability, with God's hel}), 
to govern themselves. I still believe that they sec 
and feel the unimaginable grandeur and beauty of 
the great and holy office which God has set them to 
fill — the office of demonstrating the excellency of 
intelligent and sanctified freedom in a nation ; that 
they recognize and contemn the paltry selfishness of 
the dogs that yelp against the fair edifice of our 
republic; and that they will speedily send them 
howling to their dens, or disappointed to their 
graves. 

There may be many perils along our path — much 
suffering in store for us. Perhaps the seal must be 
dipped in blood that is still to be set to the record of 
our final and assured prosperity as a nation. But 



OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 465 

even though it be thus, shall we for that turn shame- 
fully back from the great work that is set before us 
to do ? Shall we ignobly refuse to do the office to 
which God has set us apart, in the sight of all the 
world ? I say, no. I am yet to be forced to believe 
that our people are so fallen backward toward a dark 
barbarism as to acquiesce in such an abject abnega- 
tion ; and I am yet to be forced to believe that the God 
of our fathers has so utterly rejected us that in his hot 
anger he will thus cast us out and leave us a jest and 
a scoff among the crowned tyrants of the earth. I 
believe better things. I believe that he will still 
lead us, as he has thus far led us, along the path 
toward the glorious object of our natural life; I 
believe that better days will come ; and that in the 
sunshine of prosperity, and our good God still leading 
us, we shall in future years rise still higher and 
more gloriously in the scale of being ; that the voice 
of our glory and our rejoicing shall, in louder and 
still louder tones, announce its wondrous lesson to 
the nations, proclaiming liberty throughout all the 
land, even unto all the inhabitants thereof. 



THE END, 



